


Boycott Love

by scarredsodeep



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Angst, Choose Your Own Adventure, Hiatus, Humor, M/M, Pre-hiatus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-18
Updated: 2013-02-18
Packaged: 2017-11-29 17:51:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 50
Words: 53,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/689770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarredsodeep/pseuds/scarredsodeep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Boycott Love is a choose-your-own-adventure Peterick from around 2009, when the band was first talking about splitting up. Does the band stay together? Do Pete and Patrick GET together? Does Patrick order fruit parfait or waffles?! These and many other choices are up to you.</p><p>Because it’s a choose-you-own-adventure story, you don't read it straight through. Instead, start with chapter one, and from there you’ll make choices at the end of each chapter that will determine which chapter you read next--just follow the instructions at the end of each chapter. I strongly recommend you read in the spirit of the genre; no cheating and no going back! To get the full experience, start over if you reach an ending you don’t like instead of trying to backtrack. There are 13 different endings in here. Some are happy and some are not. Most of them are at least a little funny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and welcome! I wrote this story for my best friend a few years ago. A lot of research went into the fandom for this project, since it’s the first and only FOB fic I’ve written—I tried to do a good job with the tone and characterization, and as a gift it was well-received, so I hope you’ll like it too.
> 
> I don’t own the characters in this story and none of this ever happened. It did, however, take a long time and a lot of work to pull off, so I hope you enjoy it! Happy adventuring.

It was during the last song of the last set that Patrick Stump realized he couldn’t stand it anymore. For all he knew, they would never go on tour again, never stay up another night writing at Pete’s, never record another album—for all he knew, this was their last show. Ever.

He had to tell Pete how he felt.

The mere thought of it sent him into a reflexive panic, the kind he’d learned for the sake of self-preservation the very first time the thought of being forthcoming and honest had crossed his mind, three years ago at least. That was three years of redoubled heart rate, palm sweat, and stammering whenever Pete leaned too close; that was three years of nausea and dizziness every time Pete hit him with that crooked, devil-may-care smile that threatened to spill the truth out of him before he had time to resist.

As a rule, Patrick never thought about Pete during a show. In fact, it was the only time he could exorcise every thought of the man from his mind—the only time he could lose himself in something that wasn’t Pete’s wide brown eyes.

Thinking about telling him now had its usual awful effect. His hand faltered and froze on the fret bar and his throat closed up, dropping him out of the chorus altogether just in time for about a gallon of his own saliva to shoot down his windpipe. The typical Stump luck aimed the resultant choking-to-death fit straight into the mic.

So. Time for a life inventory.

Their last song together was ruined, grinding to a halt as Pete pounded him on the back, Joe tossed him a bottle of water, and 500 preteen girls tried to call 911 at once. He was 24 years old and had been in exactly one long-term relationship and had never held a steady job. His relationship with his parents was absolute shit and, oh yeah, he was the nine millionth member of the Pete Wentz fan club. Beyond all _that_ , he suffered from a chronic hand cramp and an almost pathological fear of zombies (and his mother). The man he harbored illicit love for was oblivious, straight and, to top it all off, a _father_ ; and the band that was his life and livelihood might not live to see another day.

In other words, he had a lot going for him.

Patrick wondered idly what the chances of actually choking to death on his own saliva were. Not high enough, it seemed, because his coughing died down and Pete squeezed his arm and whispered “Don’t die on me” into his ear, and Patrick longed for death more than ever.

The thing was, Pete was perfect.

What if they never saw each other again, after tonight? He _had_ to tell him, if only because at this point ‘risking everything’ meant risking less than ever before.

The rational part of Patrick’s brain, even at this proximity to Pete, explained patiently for the nth time that that was ridiculous. Just because Patrick so often bailed on all their plans that weren’t strictly work-related didn’t mean he didn’t get invitations. And even in spite of Patrick’s best efforts, it wasn’t like they never hung out. They hung out all the time. Well—at least as often as a neurotic, lovesick recluse and a famous new parent could manage. Admittedly, the rational part of the Stump brain conceded, that was not as much as if had been back when everything was simpler—when Patrick had never tried to tell Pete how he felt and Pete had never impregnated a pop star. Ah, the good old days. But this was the world they lived in now and the rational bit of Patrick knew he’d see Pete the very next morning, bleary-eyed with hair askew, hungover from the show. They’d drink coffee and Pete would aimlessly dissect a muffin and only eat the blueberries and they’d go over every nuance of the performance and resolutely avoid discussing anything of remote importance, like the band’s future or the rumors Patrick had _read in a magazine_ that they might be breaking up, or the night just before Bronx was born when Patrick had squeaked that he sort of, um, was in love with Pete and Pete had walked out without saying anything and they had never, ever mentioned it again.

Something tightened in Patrick’s stomach and he realized just how much he didn’t want that, realized that he might actually prefer never seeing Pete again. Because after a certain point, what was it but masochism, subjecting himself to the company of the very much straight and very much oblivious love of his life?

 

**WHERE DOES PATRICK GO FROM HERE?**

**IF HE SAYS TO HELL WITH IT, AND TELLS PETE HOW HE FEELS…**  
…turn to the chapter 2 and continue reading.

 **IF HE BITES HIS TONGUE AND GOES TO BREAKFAST…**  
…turn to chapter 3 and continue reading.


	2. Chapter 2

Patrick practiced meditation breathing and faked a smile as they bowed their way off the stage, inundated by the shrieks and wails of an alarmingly devoted fan base. As the cool darkness of the wings washed over them, Pete flashed him a dazzling, sweaty smile. He was panting a little, clearly not having benefitted from Serenity Through Breathing tapes as Patrick had. Patrick thought to he ought to find a tape on Treacherously Shaking Hands or Making Words Come Out Properly as well, because those were clearly going to be his next two obstacles, now that he’d got the breathing situation under control.

“Good show, I think,” Pete beamed, unbearably, unfairly beautiful as he coasted on a post-show high. Patrick would usually have been right there with him, but not tonight. Tonight he was young, tongue-tied and reckless. “Except for you trying to die at the end,” Pete added, teasing, throwing an arm around his bandmate’s shoulders. “What was that about?”

But Patrick wasn’t in the mood for easy banter as if it was any other night. It was the last night—or at least, it might well be. Only Pete knew for sure—Pete who had talked to a _reporter_ about _leaving the band_ , Pete who hadn’t seen fit to share it with anyone else—not even said band members or his supposed best friend.

Patrick felt a surge of anger, anger at Pete, and was surprised to find that that made it easier.

“Is this our last show or isn’t it?” Patrick blurted, voice still too loud from the show. Apparently he had developed a kind of confrontational Tourette’s. Terrific. He’d had so much going for him already.

Pete looked taken aback, some of the after-show glow falling away. It didn’t make him any less beautiful, but that was the Stump luck. Even when he’d just rolled out of bed with eyeliner smeared down his face, smelling like buckets of sweat and last night’s stage, he was beautiful. The universe blatantly refused to give Patrick any kind of advantage, or indeed even a chance to gather his wits about him.

“Uh, I’m… not sure,” Pete said lamely, still looking bewildered and a little defensive. “I mean, the tour’s over, isn’t it? And we haven’t even begun to talk about a new—”

“ _You_ haven’t, you mean,” Patrick interrupted vehemently, surprised at himself. He was on a roll tonight, apparently. “You haven’t talked about a new album. All _you’ve_ talked about is leaving the band!”

Pete looked pained, glancing around the dark, high-ceiled wing as if seeking an escape hatch. The oceanic crush of the crowd beyond was still audible, but Joe and Andy had followed the tech guys backstage proper. It was only the two of them now—no rescue. No turning back. Certainly no conveniently labeled escape hatches, no matter how devotedly Pete might squint off into the darkness.

“Is that what this is about? Aw, Patrick. You know the band means the world to me. But I’ve got Bronx now, and my name isn’t doing you guys any favors, and…. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about. I don’t know.” Pete trailed off, looking to Patrick for absolution.

“Are you leaving or aren’t you?” Patrick demanded. He wasn’t a fucking Communion wafer; he couldn’t wash away all of Pete’s myriad sins. Anyway, he had to know. It felt like the whole world was coming down around him—had felt that way since he’d seen the comment in the stupid magazine that Joe and Andy had been trying so desperately to hide from him. Reality was a dull roar around him, threatening to suck him under.

Pete, oblivious as Patrick was obvious, laughed. It was his nervous laugh—it meant he was uncomfortable, cornered, possibly getting a little angry from the stress. This was how well Patrick knew the man, and he hated them both for it. It felt like a lyric Pete would write—and why was it Pete could write what Patrick felt better than Patrick could even feel it? There was another thing that made him angry—about love so desperate it felt like hate, sometimes; love so strong and so long unanswered that maybe it _was_ hate.

“Patrick, Jesus!” he said, sounding strained, still doing that weird awkward laugh. “Calm down, okay? I just don’t know right now! Why does this have to be such a big deal?”  
Pete winced even as he said it. It was their fucking band—that’s why it had to be such a big deal. It was their life, their passion, the root of their entire friendship, Patrick’s whole life. Before the band, what was he? A skinny guy with cool knee socks and a tech vest who thought it might be neat to be a drummer? Yeah, that was where he wanted to be in life. That was what he wanted on his headstone. Maybe if he was lucky, they’d bury him in the damn vest.

“I’m sorry,” Pete sighed into the stony silence. “This is hard for me to even consider. I don’t want to do the wrong thing yet again.” Pete’s voice went soft as it always did when he put on his wounded self, slipping in and out of it like an favorite old hoodie he couldn’t bring himself to part with, no matter how ragged and unfashionable it had become. It was his way of getting out of things. The Pete Wentz School of Logic taught that there was nothing a good self-pity wouldn’t convince your bandmates to forgive you for, and there was a reason they taught it. It was spot-on. 

All the fight drained out of Patrick and he wanted nothing so much as to wrap his arms around Pete, to hold him, to tell him everything was okay, whether or not it was the truth. This was what always happened when Pete recalled a specter of his sordid past. It worked like a charm every time.

Instead of doing any of the things he ached to do, Patrick spoke quietly, defeated: “You can’t go, Pete. We… I need you.”

Pete froze, staring hard at Patrick with suddenly blazing eyes. Would he run away this time, too? He glanced towards the corridor leading backstage, plainly considering it, taking note of the emergency exit sign burning in the dark. But Pete must have sensed something different about Patrick today—something aggressive. The Patrick Stump he was dealing with tonight was not one that would let him flee from the imminent confession. Tonight’s Patrick Stump, while a little sweaty, a little desperate, a little sad, was the sort that would follow him wherever he ran to and scream it if he had to, so long as this time it made it to Pete’s unwilling ears. Whatever was coming, Pete seemed to decide, it was safest—best—if no one else heard it. That way they could carry on pretending they didn’t know.

Pete visibly resigned himself to staying and weathering what Patrick was about to say. He gave the other man a pleading look, as if asking him to take it back before it was ever said.

“Don’t do this,” Pete said quietly, too quietly. So quietly that it gave Patrick wild hope, the kind that would break, that he would hurt himself with. Somehow Pete’s horror, Pete’s plea, made him think that the other man could somehow feel the same. Maybe it was deranged, to think that way; maybe Patrick Stump was, in fact, a sociopath. But he found hope there, and by this point, he was taking any hope he could get. That was the trick to getting out of bed in the morning, he had learned: taking what hope you could find, and fucking running with it.

“I have to,” flew out of Patrick’s mouth without his permission. There was no going back now. “If this is it—if this is the end—I have to tell you. I have to tell you that—”  
But what Patrick had to tell remained untold as Pete’s calm broke like a dropped glass. “You think I don’t know?” he cried suddenly. His eyes burned in the darkness, so close that Patrick could feel the heat off his agitated body. “Dear God, Patrick, did you possibly imagine you make it easy _not_ to know? Did you think you make _any_ thing about this _easy_? Tell me, did you think blurting out declarations of undying love in _restaurants_ was an especially subtle behavior?”

Patrick had not expected this. He didn’t know what to say. He had imagined horror, disgust, violence—he had even wildly, briefly, imagined joy, acceptance, happily ever after. He had not anticipated these angry, exasperated-sounding shouted inquiries in to his thought processes. This exact reaction was not one he’d thought to prepare for.  
He cast about for what to say. All he came up with as an apology. He scrapped it. Better to save that for later, when things got really desperate. Instead he took the route of staring at Pete in utter bewilderment, based on its success in the past.

“Didn’t consider that, did you?” Pete cried in an ugly, scathing voice. “Didn’t think about what if would mean for _my_ life if my best friend fell in love with me and then had the indecency to tell me about it! Didn’t think for even one second that I might get enough mindless adoration, did you, Patrick! Didn’t begin to imagine that I don’t _want_ that from you! Maybe to you I want to be ugly, or anonymous, or flawed—maybe you need a best friend for that, to center you, to keep you in reality—I mean, come _on_ , Patrick! What good did you _possibly_ see coming out of this?”

“It’s not easy for—” Patrick tried feebly to defend himself, mostly to stop the shouting, but Pete was not stopping, maybe not ever. 

“I have a wife!” he yelled next. “I have a goddamn _son_! I have responsibilities and commitments and all kinds of shit I have to live with, and I absolutely do _not_ need to hear you say you think you love me tonight!”

Pete seemed to have exhausted himself at last. The wing fell silent except for the sound of his heaving chest filling up with gasp after gasp of air, as if he was drowning, as if he was too angry to breathe like anything but a slavering velociraptor.

“I’m sorry,” Patrick whispered, judging this moment appropriate in ways no previous moment had ever been. Pete was right. When he’d tried to tell him the first time—hadn’t quite gotten the words out then, either, though he supposed Pete had been willing to overlook that incident so long as it never came up again, and that had been fairly obvious at the time—when he’d tried to tell him over dinner as if it were a casual affair, like saying ‘did you know it’s February?’ or ‘by the way, I wear size 11 sneakers’, something kind of unnecessary and irrelevant and trivial nonetheless—he _hadn’t_ thought about Pete, not really. He hadn’t thought about Ashlee or the baby she was growing. He hadn’t thought about what it was _like_ to be Pete Wentz, to be pelted with strangers’ underwear and flashed ill-conceived pictures of his own genitalia every time he stepped on stage. He hadn’t even briefly considered how wonderful it might be to relax and spend time with someone that _wasn’t_ under the impression that the sun shone out his ass, or how much Pete might have needed that, to just be a normal guy, to be really known, really seen, for all his faults and insufficiencies and everyday facets that anyone who adored him was, by very definition, blind to.

It took all the strength and all the love Patrick had ever felt to make his next choice. If he really loved Pete—if he really believed in end-all be-all everything-for-you love—then the best thing he could do for Pete, for his _friend_ , was to do just that: be his friend, and only his friend, and find a way for that to be enough for him.  
Patrick took a deep breath and said, “You’re right, Pete, and I’m sorry. I… I’ll try to stop.”

Pete shot him a withering look, as if to say it was much too late for that now. “How will that help?” he demanded, sounding at once on the verge of tears and as if Patrick was the stupidest person he’d ever met, both of which were probably true. “I’ll still be in love with you, won’t I?”

After hearing that, Patrick mused as he pulled Pete into his arms at last, everything else in the world had ceased to exist. Pete loved him—what else could possible matter?

Nothing.

 

 

**_the end_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Congratulations! Ending unlocked! Return to the start and try different choices if you want to play again.


	3. Chapter 3

“Ghnn,” Patrick groaned into his cell phone. It was at least an hour before noon the morning after a show and, as usual, Patrick bore most of the traditional symptoms of a hangover: throbbing headache, cotton mouth, vertigo, raw throat, ravenous hunger, ringing ears, spotty memory paired with a deep sense of regret, sensitivity to light and, above all, a pressingly urgent need to stay the hell in bed ‘til the sun was back on its way down.

There was only one person he knew who was awful enough to make such a foul and thoughtless phone call.

“Don’t tell me you’re still sleeping!” Pete cajoled sunnily over the phone even as he began pounding at the door to Patrick’s hotel room. “Brunch is at eleven. You _know_ this!”

Patrick mumbled something that was quite possibly not even English into his phone, wishing he was dead. He wished he was dead every time Pete dragged him out of bed for some half-assed brunch, it was true, but this was a particularly pronounced longing.

He still remembered last night. The way he’d debated then and there if he ought to throw caution to the wind and tell Pete the truth—and the cowardly way he’d chosen not to, even knowing that this, getting out of bed and pretending it was all right, hurt more than losing Pete possibly could have.

Patrick hung up the phone, wrestled a shirt over his head, and paused to squint at his reflection before he threw open the door. Not too shabby, he thought to himself. He’d gained weight—a lot of it—like a tech-vest-seam-straining lot of it—when Pete had abandoned him in their favorite restaurant with the bitter aftertaste of his own words left in his mouth. Patrick didn’t even like to think about it. A much better thing to think about was how he was finally losing the weight. He was still something of a butterbody, it was true, but—and this was Patrick’s personal opinion—that wasn’t the worst thing. There were probably some very nice men and women out there who would find him, at worst, utterly inoffensive with his clothes off.

Self-esteem thusly bolstered, Patrick felt brave enough to open the door and let a bedraggled but chipper version of Pete drag him out of his room, out of the hotel, and to the first café with outdoor tables they came across.

Pete draped himself unceremoniously in a chair, t-shirt riding up to reveal an olive-skinned hip. Patrick resolutely affixed his eyes to the menu. No wonder dieting was easy, he thought to himself. When temptation like this threw itself in his face on a regular basis… when he lived out of hotel rooms and buses with a man like Pete… Well. What was passing up a slice of cheesecake after that?

Ooh. Cheesecake. Patrick practically salivated at the thought. Thank God cafés didn’t typically serve cheesecake for brunch; the diet would be over in a heartbeat, he’d go into a calorie frenzy and lose all self-control, and he’d probably finish off the meal by raping Pete. Patrick shuddered at his own untrustworthiness.

“You’re getting waffles, right?” Pete asked, flipping through his own menu, oblivious to the cheesecake-induced danger he had been in for a few moments there. “Like the really good, bigger-than-your-head waffles with the whipped cream and the strawberries?” Pete made eye contact over their menus and scowled menacingly. “Because last night was the last show, and it is now our last brunch. The tour is over and you haven’t eaten anything but—but—that goopy fruit pus stuff that looks so vile.”

Patrick couldn’t help but be disgusted by Pete’s description. “Are you talking about fruit parfait?” he asked, stomach turning. “Because fruit parfait is just as good as a waffle, thanks.”

“We used to get waffles after every show!” Pete whined, now smacking Patrick’s menu with his own, trying to keep the grin off his face. “Why do you want to eat pus when you could have delicious syrup-drenched—”

“It doesn’t even look like pus!” Patrick cried, fighting a smile of his own. How could this really be their last brunch? And, for that matter, how had he ever dreamed of skipping it? He needed this. He loved this.

He loved Pete.

Patrick’s fine assortment of reasons for non-attendance presented themselves once more even as Pete harassed him about the waffles. _You don’t get on the cover of GQ eating waffles, butterbody_ , part of Patrick’s mind carped. Patrick had not been previously aware that there was _any_ part of him interested in being on the cover of GQ, but then he had always viewed Saturday as a day of discovery, so at least the timing was fortuitous. Another part of his brain wheedled, _But it’s the last day of the tour, and you haven’t indulged since you pulled out of that really rough spot of depression._ This was another tidbit Patrick had not been aware of; privately, he had quite thought he was still very much wrapped up in the rough spot of it, since Pete had still fathered the child of a shockingly fertile pop star and appeared no closer to realizing that Patrick was, in fact, his one true love. The rest of Patrick’s mind was entirely tied up mooning over Pete and didn’t weigh in on the matter.

It was just as the waiter approached and Patrick was about to ask for a parfait when Pete’s question exploded, astonished, out of his mouth. “Patrick—you’re not trying to lose _weight_ , are you?”

Blood immediately flooded into Patrick’s cheeks. He felt hot, dry-mouthed, tongue-tied. The waiter glanced from one man to the next, eyebrow quirked, waiting for someone to spit out an order.

Patrick began to sweat.

The clock was ticking.

 

 

**WHAT DOES PATRICK ORDER?**

**IF HE ORDERS WAFFLES…**  
…turn to ch 4 and continue reading.

**IF HE ORDERS FRUIT PARFAIT…**  
…turn to ch 5 and continue reading.


	4. Chapter 4

“Waffles,” Patrick said firmly to the waiter, avoiding Pete’s wide, amused eyes. “Like a really giant plate of waffles. I mean, the biggest, most serious plate you have. Heart attack-sized waffles. If that’s possible. And, um, with the whipped cream and the strawberries and all that too. If I don’t get diabetes just from looking at it, I’m sending it back.” Feeling that he might have pushed it a little too far, Patrick risked a glance at Pete, who had cheered and said “Same for me”.

Pete grinned wickedly back at him as the waiter strode away, shaking his head and muttering. “Guess that answers that question, huh?” he teased. “I like you better when you look cuddly anyway—not like some underfed emo kid with a bad haircut.”

“I wouldn’t have come off that way if I didn’t have to sing _your_ emo lyrics,” Patrick shot back without thinking. Fine, so he was a little touchy about his weight. Wasn’t everyone?

Pete raised his palms in innocence, still smiling. “Calm yourself! I’m just sayin’, it’s nice to have my chubbo back. All your fruit pus has been worrying me.”

Chubbo? Really, _chubbo_? He’d been practically starving himself for months just so Pete could turn around and call him _chubbo_?

“Patrick? Are you feeling nauseous or something? I swear to god you just turned green.”

 

**IF PATRICK EXCUSES HIMSELF TO THE BATHROOM TO PUNCH SOMETHING…**  
…turn to ch 6 and continue reading.

**IF HE FAKES HIS WAY THROUGH THE MEAL AS IF HE CAN EVEN TASTE FOOD AT THIS POINT, LET ALONE ENJOY IT…**  
…turn to chapter 9 and continue reading.


	5. Chapter 5

Patrick took a deep, steadying breath. He was, he told himself firmly, a man. Not only was he a man, he added with conviction, he was a man on a diet. He was a man who was not going to be fat for the rest of his life. He was a man—and he was building up a proper head of steam now—he was a man who was not afraid to make sacrifices. He most _certainly_ was a man who was not indebted to a certain Pete Wentz in any way, and therefore refused to be bullied, on principle. In fact—and this had very little to do with breakfast choices, truth be told—if there was anyone who owed anyone else, it was Patrick who was the debtor. Not Pete.

No longer certain if that gave him the upper hand or not, or indeed if debtor was such a desirable position to be in, Patrick looked up at the increasingly impatient waiter. “And for you?” the waiter pressed, perhaps heartened by the sudden burst of eye contact. He said it with the air of a man who had already had to ask several times with little hope of ever receiving an answer.

“The fruit parfait,” Patrick said decisively, daring Pete to challenge him. It was hard to be certain whether or not Pete was actually aware that a challenge had been issued, but excuses were not on Patrick Stump’s accepted currency manifest, and he was not much inclined to make any exceptions this particular morning.

Pete ordered a ridiculous diabetes-inducing waffle for himself, scowling at Patrick all the while. The waiter was scarcely out of earshot before he demanded, “All right, Stump, what’s all this parfait business about?”

Patrick opened his mouth, perhaps to feign ignorance, but decided against it at the last second. This gave him a very dignified moment of saying “Er” as meaningfully as possible while he mentally scrambled for something to say instead. Pete had this effect on him.

At last coming up with something that would do, Patrick executed the brilliant conversational coup of saying, “I happen to like fruit parfait”, which was an utter lie. He supposed it was all right, if you liked mushy fruit and flavorless yogurt and soggy granola and being able to look in the mirror in the morning without feeling ill, and it was really only that last bit that he cared for.

“You do not,” Pete shot back so quickly it was as if he’d read Patrick’s mind. Patrick immediately felt a staggering wave of relief that Pete could not read his mind. “Nobody likes that gooey healthy shit. Don’t know why you eat it.”

Patrick’s empty (yet still, somehow, flabby) stomach flexed in reflexive envy as the waiter brought out Pete’s waffles and Patrick’s cup of oozing blueberries, snotty strawberries, and pus. Pete was right. It really did look disgusting. It festered before his eyes like some kind of awful, low-calorie wound.

Perhaps it was the jealousy that motivated him; perhaps it was revulsion at the way the parfait’s sundae cup—yes, the exact kind of fluted glass container that made one think so cruelly of ice cream covered in smoldering chocolate, because irony was neither dead nor even down for the count but instead quite live and well—perspired in the sunlight. It was hard to say exactly what caused it, but Patrick found himself being honest with his best friend for the first time in—well, in ages, really.

“Well, I’ve gotten fat, haven’t I?” he said, poking at his parfait with a spoon to make sure it was well and truly tame. Yogurt was a living thing, Patrick had been horrified to learn—it was always best to make sure it was properly subdued before trying to ingest it. “So I’m trying to cut back on ingesting mass amounts of syrup and starch and heavy whipping cream.”

“But those are the best parts of life!” Pete moaned, lovingly (maddeningly) licking whipped cream from the corners of his lips. “Anyway, Patrick, you’re not fat, are you?”

“You’re kidding,” Patrick said flatly, deciding that he was best off sating his hunger with coffee and leaving the parfait to its own devices. The yogurt had seemed a little feisty for his taste. “I’ve lost thirty pounds during this tour and I’m _still_ fat.”

Pete looked at him appraisingly, whipped cream stranded on his left cheek. For a moment, Patrick wanted to do nothing so much as lean over and lick it off; then Pete shrugged and said, “Y’know, I hadn’t noticed, but I think you’ve got a point.”

After that, all Patrick wanted to do was leap across the table and tear Pete’s head off with his hands.

 

 

**DOES PATRICK SUCCUMB TO HIS HOMICIDAL URGES?**

**IF PATRICK PICKS A STUPID FIGHT ABOUT NOTHING TO MASK THE DEGREE TO WHICH PETE’S FAT JOKE INJURED HIS FEELINGS…**  
…turn to chapter 8 and continue reading.

 **IF PATRICK PRETENDS TO BE FINE EVEN THOUGH A BLIND MAN COULD SEE THROUGH THE ACT…**  
…turn to chapter 9 and continue reading.


	6. Chapter 6

“Oh, no, I’m just fine,” Patrick said through clenched teeth. “Not—nauseous—at all.” He had to get out of here. He had to get out of here, or he was going to murder Pete. He remembered fondly the good ol’ days of four or five minutes ago, when the only immediate dangers posed to him were those of bingeing on cheesecake and potentially raping his bandmate. This whole public homicide thing could turn into a real problem.

“On second thought,” he couldn’t help himself from biting out, “on second thought, maybe Chubbo _is_ nauseous. In fact, I think I might hurl. Excuse me, won’t you?” Patrick got to his feet abruptly. Pete, nursing a coffee, looked up at him through dark lashes questioningly.

Patrick chose not to answer, and abdicated in the general direction of what he felt he could probably safely assume might be the café’s bathroom.

 

 

**TURN TO CHAPTER 7 AND CONTINUE READING.**


	7. Chapter 7

Patrick barely made it into the bathroom in time. Fury and pent-up frustration were beginning to give him spasms, and he was going to scream. After all this time. After everything he’d done, after how long and how hard he’d loved Pete—after all that. After all that, this is what he got? God _damn_ it. Goddamn _everything_. Why did he  do this? Why did he keep doing this to himself?

Patrick let out a short bark of an angry yell, unable to contain it. God but he was unhappy. The thought of Pete’s eyes, Pete’s smile, any one moment in their long and torturous friendship—all of it manifested as physical _pain_. Patrick let out another short howl and punched the tarnished mirror over the filthy sink, which did not explode (as he had hoped) but merely crunched. It was something he’d seen people do in movies. He hadn’t really thought it through.

Mirror shards dropped into the sink as the thing quietly broke. It didn’t shatter dramatically, either; instead, a spiderweb of cracks appeared where Patrick’s fist had gone and a few bits of mirror fell into the sink. There was blood on the spiderweb, Patrick realized—and looking down at his knuckles, he saw a tiny silver glint of his own red reflection. Wonderful. Now there was mirror in his hand. He wondered if he’d be able to get that out himself, or if he would be going to the hospital. Glass in skin didn’t seem like the sort of thing he ought to fiddle around and play home medic with, but he figured that pushing the shards so deeply in that he would require invasive surgery could not possibly be as painful as explaining to Pete what had happened, so he turned on the tap and stuck his hand under it.

Patrick was not a violent person. He was not especially predisposed to lash out in anger and this was the first thing he had punched since his little brother. Ever. It hurt more than he’d expected—and also, he was not thrilled to discover, he was much worse at it than he’d expected.

As some of the blood ran off, Patrick found that the cuts were much shallower than expected. The shards weren’t in deep; it only took a small amount of persuasive wiggling and pain to coax them out entirely. The wounds looked much wimpier without glittering debris in them, and Patrick was in the process of wrapping up his hand in paper towels and thinking of a likely accident to sell to Pete when the waiter burst into the room.

“Sir, are you all right?” the waiter asked, sounding more annoyed with Patrick than ever. Patrick suspected this had something to do with the way he’d nearly bowled him over on the way to the bathroom, or perhaps the especially troublesome fashion in which he’d placed his order. It might, Patrick considered, in fact be a combination of each of these factors. “We heard shouting.”

Patrick crossed his fingers that the waiter would neither notice the broken mirror nor the blood-spattered sink. “Oh, yeah, well,” Patrick said, and seized upon the first remotely feasible lie he could produce.

 

 

**WHAT IS PATRICK’S LIE?**

**IF HE INVENTS A BOWEL CONDITION…**  
…turn to ch 10 and continue reading.

**IF HE FABRICATES A MUGGING…**  
…turn to chapter 13 and continue reading. 


	8. Chapter 8

Patrick seethed quietly. It could not be said that he wasn’t under considerable amounts of stress; his band was potentially breaking up and his soulmate was a straight man who had a) utterly failed to notice Patrick’s loss of 30 pounds—i.e. a small person—and b) had now just called him fat. There was a lot to be said, he realized, for banning brunch outright. Stupid bastard of a meal, wasn’t it? Designed to cater to those slobs too lazy for breakfast and incapable of enjoying a truly decent sandwich. Patrick, he had recently decided, did not think much of those people. He didn’t think much of them at all.

Still, for all that, his reaction may have been a little out of scale. Brunch, as an institution, could hardly be said to be Pete’s fault directly. It was also not Pete’s fault that Patrick had fallen in love with him. However, there were a few things for which Patrick _could_ blame him—namely, leaving the band, even _thinking_ about leaving the band, and implying that he was fat (which he was. Sort of. But it was the principle of the thing, wasn’t it?).

Patrick felt bullied and tired and confused. He also felt he deserved some sort of award for not upending the entire table onto Pete’s consequentially crippled legs.

What he did instead, quite—well, okay, not quite reasonably—was say unpleasantly, “So whose idea was it? You leaving the band. Was it yours, or _hers_?”

Pete looked up at him, smile fading, both wounded and confused. “Where did you hear that?” he asked quietly, clearly stung by the malice Patrick had seeded his wife’s pronoun with.

Truth be told, Patrick liked Ashlee. Or at least would have, if he could forgive her for having Pete’s baby, let alone having Pete.

“I read it,” Patrick said shortly, “in a magazine.”

Pete winced, casting his eyes down to the table where his hands had begun to methodically shred a napkin. “Oh,” he said, voice even quieter now. “Well, nothing’s definite yet.”

“But you could?” Patrick pressed aggressively, feeling wild and reckless. “You could just walk away and leave me?”

“You?” Pete echoed, looking even more hurt and confused.

“Us!” Patrick snapped, feeling his face flush with color. He’d misspoken, and badly so. To cover for it, he pushed harder, angry. “You could walk the hell away from everything we’ve made and not even care that—”

“Whoa, whoa,” Pete protested at last, still slumped in his seat and looking defeated, pitifully beautiful. “Patrick, it’s— _I’m_ —not like that! You know I’m not.” His voice trailed off on that pleading note.

“I don’t, though,” Patrick said too loudly, words corrosive. He felt that he was slipping, spiraling out of his own grip, closer and closer to the edge, feeling tears and terror and hot white guilt building in him.

Before Pete could say anything else, Patrick blurted absurdly, “I need some air,” and bolted into the restaurant proper.

 

 

**TURN TO CHAPTER 7 AND CONTINUE READING.**


	9. Chapter 9

Because Patrick Stump was a stand-up guy, he decided to let the weight comment slide. He instead opted to pick at his food and engage in polite conversation. If he was half-hearted, it did not show; or at least, Pete himself was too preoccupied to notice. In fact, Patrick observed, his friend looked more deeply troubled than he had in months, as if his warring thoughts had subsided only long enough for the tour before resuming their bloody squabble.

Finally Patrick broke the comfortably shallow pattern of their conversation to ask, as any proper friend would, “Is something wrong?”

It only took a tiny push. Pete dropped his head into his hands, moaning, “God yes.” He peered at Patrick through his fingers. “Patrick, I don’t know how to say it, but—” Pete jerked his head up in sudden alertness and hissed, “There’s a girl taking cell phone pictures of me.”

Patrick was a little taken aback. That hadn’t seemed hard to say at all. If anything, it was a little silly. “Well, yeah, you’re a rock star. It happens. Now tell me, why was that so difficult to say?”

“Shut up! Get down!” Pete hissed, ducking his own head under the table and beginning to speak very quickly. “Shit, we’ve been spotted.”

That the fangirl sighting had not been Pete’s actual confession but merely a distraction slowly became apparent to Patrick. So did the direness of their current position.

 

 

**TURN TO CHAPTER 12 AND CONTINUE READING.**


	10. Chapter 10

“It’s kind of a delicate condition,” Patrick ad-libbed wildly. The waiter did not look impressed. “I mean—um—sometimes it’s very difficult for me to… you know.”

The waiter’s unimpressed eyebrow levitated above his brow. “No, I’m afraid I don’t,” he said dryly, looking much too snobby and disapproving for the caliber café he worked in. Patrick felt rather inclined to point it out, and vowed to, if the opportunity presented itself.

“To defecate,” Patrick said as disparagingly as he was able. It didn’t do much to stop him blushing, which, he supposed, only lent credence to his tale. “It is sometimes very difficult for me _to defecate_.” He gestured towards the stall he had fictitiously occupied to keep the waiter’s eyes away from the broken mirror. “On that note, I would very much advise you to stay away from that stall there.” Patrick smiled in a way he hoped said ‘now that our business is concluded, I’ll be off’, but the waiter continued to block the doorway, hands now resting on his hips, lip curled into an unpleasant sneer. Again with the snobbery! Patrick added to his vow sheet that he would never dine at this establishment again.

“And the shouting, sir?” the waiter asked, a decidedly nasty tone in his voice.

“Well—that—that was just grunting,” Patrick blurted out, wincing. Of all the lies he could have come up with, he had to pick this one? “You know, kind of… part of the process.” His face burned with humiliation, and that gave him an idea. Trying to match the waiter’s snobbishness one-for-one, he said in his best, loftiest voice, “Now, if you’re quite through humiliating me about my sensitive medical condition, I’d like to speak to your manager.”

Patrick winced again. Speaking to this bastard’s manager was the last thing he wanted to do. Damn it. Shit. What he wanted to do was get the hell away from this broken mirror/bleeding hand situation before anyone at the restaurant wised up and billed him for it.

The waiter, at least, looked cowed. “Of course, sir. I’ll get him immediately.”

Fuck it. Really, just fuck it. Nothing was worth this.

Patrick pulled out his wallet. “Wait, wait,” he sighed, holding up his free hand. “Here, here’s, I don’t know, two hundred dollars. Fix the mirror, keep the change, and keep this whole thing off my Wikipedia page, okay? That means no tabloids, no _Oh No They Didn’t_ , no anyone with a press pass or their own website.”

The bewildered waiter looked from the mirror to the money to Patrick. “I’m sorry, sir, are you… someone important?” he asked, as belittlingly as possible.

Patrick scowled at him as viciously as he was able. “Take—the—money,” he growled, stuffing the cash into the waiter’s hand and shoving past him to the door before adding over his shoulder, “Oh, and also—this is just for you—you should find a nicer café if you want to treat people like—”

“Like defecation, sir?” the waiter smirked.

Enough was enough. Patrick stormed out of the bathroom before he was forced to punch anything else.

 

**WHERE DOES PATRICK GO FROM HERE?**

**IF HE SNEAKS OUT THE BACK WAY AND DITCHES PETE…**  
…turn to chapter 14 and continue reading.

**IF HE RETURNS TO THE TABLE…**  
…turn to chapter 11 and continue reading.


	11. Chapter 11

Patrick strolled back to the table, feeling no better about his life now that he’d incited gratuitous property damage and been verbally assaulted by a waiter. He had no sooner sat down when Pete made everything worse.

“There’s a girl over there,” Pete said urgently. Patrick frowned bad-temperedly. He was getting pretty sick of pretending to be interested in the parade of strange women Pete was determined to set him up with. He didn’t remember saying, ‘Hey, Pete, I’m holding open auditions for the role of my soulmate, so bring me every random woman you see on the street who has no visible deformities from a distance of 35 feet’, but it must have happened at some point, because there was no other feasible explanation for Pete’s behavior.

“I am not interested in chatting up, hooking up, or shacking up with any of the women in this café,” Patrick said irritably. Usually he went along with the routine, but he was newly short on patience today. Punching something had not been as cathartic as movies made it out to be.

“I think it’s a fangirl,” Pete hissed urgently.

That was a whole different story.

Patrick did not need any urging. He and Pete both dove for cover under the table in almost perfect synchrony.

 

 

**TURN TO CHAPTER 12 AND CONTINUE READING.**


	12. Chapter 12

“Shit,” Patrick echoed. “How old is she, about?”

Pete, now crouching under the table, stuck his head up to get a glimpse. The motion garnered a shriek from one of the other sidewalk tables. “Fifteen, maybe sixteen,” he whispered, ducking back into shelter, looking panicky.

“Is she alone?” Patrick asked, trying to keep a cool head.

Pete poked his head over again. “She—shit, there’s like five of them, run!”

It was not their usual policy to run from fans. Nor was it their usual policy to hide under café tables from cell phone-wielding sixteen-year-olds. But before Patrick could voice any of these concerns, Pete had loosed a wild cackle and was off running. Patrick hesitated a crucial moment; as soon as Pete had bolted, the fangirls had followed, lunging across the outdoor eating area like bloodhounds. Patrick fumbled some money out of his pocket—all he had was a fifty, _of course_ —and dropped it on the table and, little choice that he had, took off after Pete.

It took three blocks at an all-out run before they had a sufficient lead on their shrieking pursuers to duck into an abandoned-looking furniture shop and throw themselves flat onto a leather display couch, keeping their heads down and panting. Patrick ended up on his back on top of Pete’s legs, giggling through his labored breathing.

They were silent and still for a few moments, assessing the danger, before Pete whispered, “I feel like I’m in The Beatles.”

_A Hard Day’s Night_. Patrick remembered the film immediately. They’d watched it together. He didn’t know how to communicate the swelling mass of feeling this memory of Pete’s evoked in a casual, socially acceptable sentence, so instead he murmured, “Yeah.”

Apparently deciding that they were safe, Pete wriggled his legs out from under Patrick and hunched in a covert ball, knees pressed to his chest, arms wrapped around them. The look on his face was pure glee; he looked like a little kid. Patrick, too, scrabbled into a sitting position, scooting to the middle of the couch. He couldn’t help himself—Pete was radiating glowing warmth, and he felt cold, cold as if he’d been standing outside in wintery rain for so long he could barely remember what it was to be warm. He had to be closer; he had to be in the corona of that glow. He wanted to feel the sun on his face. Even though they’d been sitting outside only moments ago, he felt as if he could no longer remember the feeling.

Pete gratified his daring by throwing an arm around his friend’s shoulder. Patrick let the heat of this sweep him, wash over him. For a moment, he let himself imagine that the gesture was more than it was, and felt whole. “You and me, we’ve had some good times, Stump,” Pete sighed fondly, squeezing Patrick around the shoulders a little.  
Patrick dropped his head onto the back of the couch so it wouldn’t end up on Pete’s shoulder. “Yeah,” he said again, still unable to express the press of emotion he felt in a normal way. Pete looked down at him, eyes sparkling. In the sunlight that filtered through the storefront windows, the green in them shone bright; they looked earthy, healthy, living, like moss or—and Patrick felt a smile spread across his face at the thought—peat.

“What are you thinking?” Pete asked in an unusually husky voice.

Patrick’s heart skipped in his chest, but he barely felt it, suffused with peace and happiness as he was in this golden, perfect moment. “Your eyes,” he said, letting free a chuckle that came out masculine and worldly as opposed to dorky, as per usual. “They look like peat.” Pete would hear it as his name, but Patrick didn’t feel the need to specify; they looked like Pete, too.

A slow, golden knowledge eased into Patrick as he stared up into his friend’s eyes. Pete was looking at him in a way he didn’t think he’d ever been looked at before, really studying him, really _seeing_ him. By every standard, every spec, every book he’d ever read and every movie he’d ever seen, this was what he’d been longing for and dreaming of for years. This was a Moment. They were having an honest-to-god Moment.

Patrick bit his lip to keep himself from saying it, those words that were always on his lips, begging to be spoken.

“What? What is it?” Pete asked, voice small and quiet and not at all like his own.

 

 

**DOES PATRICK…**

**SEIZE _the Moment_?**  
Turn to ch 16 and continue reading.

-or-

**LET _the Moment_ SLIP AWAY?**  
Turn to chapter 18 and continue reading.


	13. Chapter 13

“I was mugged,” Patrick said simply, priding himself on the classical austerity of his lie. He’d always been of the painfully honest breed, and everyone he’d ever dated or toured with or really even spent upwards of five minutes with had maintained that he was a horrible liar. Patrick didn’t believe that for a second, though: a mugging. It was pure genius. It happened to loads of people. Hell, it had even happened to Batman’s parents. It was a one-use-only perfect getaway, no questions asked. Blood? Shouting? Broken mirror? Must have been a mugging!

A flaw in this plan that had not been initially obvious dawned on Patrick a few seconds after it would have been helpful.

Didn’t people usually get mugged in alleys and derelict warehouses and slums and crackhouses and brothels and stuff? Not upscale café bathrooms?

“Mugged, sir?” the waiter asked, raising his damnable eyebrow ever higher.

“Yes, that’s right, _mugged_ ,” said Patrick, who did not much care for the way the waiter was challenging him. It only made him want to cling to his dubious tale more stubbornly, which was just as well, because he didn’t see any brilliant escape from this. “It was—er—this big guy—I fought him off, see—” Patrick waved his injured hand in the air too wildly for the waiter to get a close a look at the nature of his wound—“and that about catches us up to where you barged in.”

“Let me clarify,” the waiter said in a voice that implied he couldn’t believe Patrick actually thought he was this stupid. “You were mugged.”

Patrick waited for more, but apparently it was that solitary salient point that the waiter was struggling with. He was relieved; he’d been worried that he’d have to convince him of his ability to win a fight, and the waiter looked kind of scrappy and mean. _That was a freebie_ , Patrick thought. “Well, he sure tried to mug me, anyway,” Patrick fabricated. “And he was shouting—when I beat him off, you know—and that’s probably what you heard. That is also how the mirror was broken. He broke the mirror as well.”

“Was this before or after he fled in terror?” the waiter asked dryly, noticing the state of the mirror with an unpleasant look on his face. Patrick began to fear he had tipped his hand.

“Sort of on the way,” Patrick said, going for broke. “Like a little mirror-shattering jab of frustration, as he was leaving. He was probably embarrassed,” he added helpfully, “about being such a bad mugger. Muggist? Is it mugg _ist_ , or mugg _er_?”

Eyes still on the assaulted mirror, the waiter said, “I’ll expect you’ll want to file a report with the police, then?”

This was another complication Patrick had not foreseen. “Um, well, no,” Patrick said. Somehow he had the feeling the law would be even less gullible than the part-time café waiter he was having such trouble convincing. At the very least, his story-telling abilities would need refinement, and that could take weeks. Months, even. “He didn’t take anything off me, did he? I’m not really a muggee. Just a—um—near-miss. It was more of an attempted mugging, wasn’t it? That was my bad, really, I should have phrased it more accurately.”

“So when I walked in and asked you about the shouting,” the waiter pressed irritably, “you should have said ‘I was almost mugged’?”

Patrick, he decided, did not much care for the waiter. The waiter, he thought, was probably one of those foul brunch-eating people—and, as he had previously established, he didn’t think much of filthy brunch-eaters either.

“You know what? Maybe I _will_ go to the police,” Patrick said menacingly. It probably wasn’t very effective as a threat, but it _would_ get him out of this bathroom and away from this godforsaken waiter. Anything that would do that was undoubtedly the lesser evil.

“Excellent,” the waiter agreed, just as menacingly. “I’ll call them now. I can corroborate your story. Only—hold on a moment—I don’t recall any large, frustrated muggers fleeing this particular bathroom. I _do_ recall you nearly running me over, however—”

So _that_ was the waiter’s problem! Patrick blushed, feeling guilty. “Sorry about that,” he said. “Should have said ‘excuse me’. Um, excuse me, I guess.” Patrick did a little uncomfortable laugh. The waiter did not look amused. “So, are we good here?” Patrick asked next, stretching out the word ‘so’ to at least three times its normal size.  
“Oh no,” the waiter said darkly. “I must insist on notifying the police that there’s a big, terrifying mugger on the loose.”

Patrick had had about enough of the waiter. “Okay, look, you’re kind of being a jerk about this whole thing,” Patrick said, frustrated. “So why don’t you calm down and accept my apology and we move forward with our lives?”

Somehow, because that was Patrick’s luck, the waiter took this as an insult. “What, are you saying there’s something wrong with waiting tables? Because if you’re implying—”  
Privately, Patrick thought that this particular waiter didn’t seem very interested in waiting tables. He seemed more interested in harassing patrons who very well _could_ have been mugged and whose attempted muggers had surely escaped by now, thanks to all his jaw-flapping. Aloud, he said, “That’s it! Enough! I’ve had enough of you, and I’ve had enough of getting mugged in your café! I’m taking my business elsewhere!”

The waiter scowled. “Someone’s going to have to pay for that mirror, you know.”

“I’m not paying for the mirror!” Patrick cried, knowing that he very well ought to and would probably feel guilty about not doing so later. But now it was about the principle of the thing. If he agreed to pay for the mirror, then the waiter would think he’d been lying about the mugger (which, he had to remind himself, he had been). Patrick Stump, if not currently a man of his word, was all about being perceived as one. He was not backing down, not this time!

Shortly afterwards, he was escorted off the premises by a large, grumpy short-order chef. Pete, seated on the other side of the café’s patio, remained oblivious. But what could Patrick do? He was barely a match for a fictional mugger. There was no way he could fight off a hulking Hispanic man with a resplendent tattoo of a topless mermaid on his bicep. People got tattoos like that in prison. And in the army. Yeah, his life wasn’t going so well, but that didn’t mean he should throw it all away in a mindless brunch café brawl.

No, the only thing he could do was head back to the hotel, and decide if he should wait for the guys or, admitting defeat, head to the airport and catch an early flight back home.

 

 **IF PATRICK WAITS FOR THE GUYS AT THE HOTEL…**  
…turn to chapter 15 and continue reading.

 **IF PATRICK LEAVES A NOTE AT THE FRONT DESK AND MAKES FOR THE AIRPORT…**  
…turn to chapter 17 and continue reading.


	14. Chapter 14

Patrick wandered the streets leisurely, aimlessly making his way back to the hotel. For one thing, he was having difficulty believing he’d ditched Pete at a café. It was, he was aware, totally reprehensible behavior. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d ever ditched a class or skipped out on an obligation; marooning people at restaurants was entirely new territory for him. He also couldn’t believe he’d broken that mirror. Firstly, _ow_ —his hand still hurt. And secondly, who had seen that coming? He was Patrick Stump, Law-Abiding Citizen (Except For That One Ticket That One Time, But Come On Who Knew Carrying An Illinois License In California Was A Crime Anyway?) no more! The shackles of normal society had come off—he was now officially on his way to sociopathy!

Patrick found this a difficult thing to become particularly excited about. Personally, he had always put a lot of stock in rules. That is to say, he followed them. He expected other people to follow them. It was when he wasn’t sure what the rules were, exactly, that he was on shaky ground—and that, he decided, effectively summarized his entire relationship with Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz.

What he really needed, Patrick knew, was a break. A break from everything he loved so exhaustively/exhaustingly. A break from the band, a break from touring, and yes, a break from Pete.

 

 

**IF PATRICK RETURNS TO THE HOTEL TO WAIT FOR THE GUYS ANYWAY…**  
…turn to chapter 15 and continue reading.

**IF PATRICK HEADS TO THE AIRPORT TO CATCH AN EARLIER FLIGHT…**  
…turn to chapter 17 and continue reading.


	15. Chapter 15

Apparently, life wasn’t prepared to give Patrick even a moment of peace. He had only just stepped out of the shower when, from the sound of things, a yeti began doing its damnedest to tear the door to his room clean off its hinges.

“God Jesus I’m coming!” Patrick shouted, wondering if he should arm himself as he wrapped a towel around his waist and trotted over to the door. If it was a furious yeti, there would probably be a fight. He would probably lose, of course, if his encounter with the bathroom mirror had been any indication. On the other hand, it could be Andy or Joe. While they would not be an immediate dismemberment risk, Patrick decided he certainly wouldn’t mind beating whoever was pestering him now around the head with a lamp, and changed course. Finding the lamp to be screwed in to the bedside table, briefly entertaining the idea of dragging the whole unit over, and ultimately deciding that that would be too difficult to do while maintaining the modesty of his towel, Patrick settled for the telephone receiver, which he could swing from its cord and use as a whip of sorts, a lá the low-budget version of Indiana Jones. Indiana Stump, he could call himself.

Patrick edged over to the door with his telephone receiver and his towel, prepared for anything.

He cracked the door open bravely, and was immediately forced to amend his previous assertion, because there, in the hallway, was Pete.

He had not been prepared for Pete at all.

Patrick suddenly felt very, very stupid.

“Stump!” Pete cried, looking very angry indeed. Patrick felt a little less ridiculous. He might need the phone after all. He began to wish he was wearing more than a towel. Pete really didn’t need to see his pale flab and body hair. No one really needed to see his pale flab and body hair, he reflected; but especially not Pete.

“Uh, hi,” Patrick squeaked out as Pete shoved past him into the room, slamming the door thunderously behind him. Apparently it was not a day for strength; Pete had torn the door out of his grip as if it had been nothing. Well, it hadn’t been nothing; Patrick had tried very hard to hold on. Maybe it was because he was holding so much already—his towel, his weapon, his tongue—that it was so difficult to keep a firm grip on the door as well. The small spring of righteous indignation made him feel a little better, so he nursed it tenderly, feeding it every infuriating and thoughtless offense of Pete’s that came immediately to mind. It was a longer list than you might think.

“What the fuck happened? Where the hell did you go?” Pete demanded loudly. Patrick wondered whether or not it was loud enough to qualify as a yell.

“To the bathroom,” Patrick shot back, now feeling self-righteous enough to be angry back, even if he wasn’t quite sure what the argument was about. Probably the abandoning Pete at a café thing. Yeah, he was going to be feeling guilty about that one.

Pete knotted up the fingers of one callused hand in his shaggy black hair, looking exasperated. His face was pink. “I’m sure they had a bathroom at the café!” he said, voice now heading back down the scale, away from yelling. “I can’t believe you just fucking left me there!”

Patrick didn’t bother correcting Pete’s weird logic. “I was a little pissed at you, all right?” he said, challengingly, unlike himself. “You called me fat!”

“Jesus Christ, Patrick! _You_ called you fat!” Pete shot back, voice rising again. “What the hell is wrong with you, Stump?”

Patrick wasn’t sure what to say next. He could loose the nice little reserve of anger he’d worked up and go off on Pete, or he could tell the truth—tell Pete what was wrong, really wrong, with Patrick Stump.

 

 

 

 

**IT’S UP TO YOU!**

**IF PATRICK ’FESSES UP…**  
…turn to chapter 19 and continue reading.

**IF PATRICK TELLS PETE TO FUCK OFF…**  
…turn to chapter 24 and continue reading.


	16. Chapter 16

How many chances, how many Moments, did a person get in a lifetime? If Patrick was going to put money on it, he’d say anywhere between one and three with a standard deviation of about two. Just pure estimation. But it wasn’t money he was putting on it—it was Pete. It was himself. It was any future they might ever have.

It was ludicrous to even think about having a future with Pete, and the Patrick Stump of two minutes ago could have spent two or three days explaining that to you at length; but right here, right now, Pete was looking at him with those green-shot eyes, lips hovering only inches away, cheeks flushed and still a little breathless—and a man he had no future with would not look at him like that. The Patrick Stump of right now was sure of it.

The tour was over. The shows were done. Whether he wanted to think about it or not, there might never be another album. This might very well be the only Moment he and Pete ever got, and, made dizzy by Pete’s stare, Patrick decided he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he let it pass them by.

“Just—this,” Patrick said, voice low in his throat, slipping his hand behind Pete’s head and guiding it down to where Pete’s lips met his own.

It was a short kiss, lasting only a moment; their lips touched and, with a jolt of electricity, they broke apart. Pete stared down into Patrick’s eyes wonderingly, and Patrick knew he’d never really seen him before, not his whole self; and Pete let his lips part as if to speak—

“That is _quite_ enough of that!” a shrill voice came from a few feet to their left. It was so unexpected that Pete, startled, toppled off the couch altogether, landing in a heap of limps and indignation on the floor.

Said indignation was promptly cowed by the look on the face of the old woman that glowered down at them, arms crossed on her bony chest, severe bun pulled back so tight her eyes were just about popping out of her head.

“I—” Patrick sputtered in horror.

“We—” Pete stammered at the same moment.

“ _You_ ,” the woman said over both of them, “are not special.”

This was not what either of them had expected. Patrick and Pete exchanged a wordless glance, both a little pink of cheek and utterly perplexed.

“Uh—sorry?” Pete said.

The old woman only raised her voice, as if Pete had not spoken. “And _because_ you are not special, do you know what applies to you?”

Patrick noticed that the smock she was wearing said _Harlow’s Room Furnishings_ on it. That at least told him that she was an offended shopkeeper and not just a passing bigot. He picked out her name tag—Minnie, it said—and thought about that instead of whatever had just passed between himself and Pete.

“Um, no. Sorry,” Pete said again, wincing apologetically at her from the floor he was still crumpled on. The power of Minnie’s disapproving gaze seemed to pin him there.

“The _rules_ ,” Minnie barked, snapping one carefully painted red claw to a sign posted by the door with the crisp vigor of a Nazi salute.

Patrick’s and Pete’s heads both followed the snapping motion as if programmed to do so. It read:

**NO SHOES ON FURNITURE.**

Patrick and Pete looked at each other, both feeling as if they’d gotten away with something. Maybe they had.

They left the store, apologizing to Minnie all the way. Patrick felt a nameless giddiness rising up in him. He had kissed Pete Wentz. _He_ , Patrick Stump, had kissed _Pete Wentz_. And while it was true that it had been interrupted and not given Pete sufficient time to stage a full-scale freak-out, Patrick could not help but feel a spike of delirious joy that Pete hadn’t freaked out.

Still, Patrick reminded himself sternly, it could be coming—it probably was coming—any moment. So he braced himself for the blow as they walked down the sun-soaked sidewalk, both staring straight ahead, both silent.

The silence stretched between them and Patrick wondered if he should say something, even though he was pretty certain it was Pete’s turn to talk. He could make some comment about Minnie Harlow, but he didn’t want to discourage Pete from reflecting on the subject that he found most pertinent: the kiss that, Patrick was now less than 100% certain, had passed between them.

Surely he hadn’t imagined the whole thing.

Surely Pete couldn’t just pretend it had never happened.

Surely something had changed in that moment—which apparently had just been of the regular, non-life-changing variety—and surely Pete would know what it was.

Patrick couldn’t stand it anymore. He had to say something. It was not enough to feel the sun on his skin and stand next to Pete. It wasn’t enough to enjoy the silence and the company. He had kissed Pete Wentz in that antique store, and he had to know what he’d done.

“Pete?” he said at last, hoping to prompt something. He didn’t want to have to conjure up questions. In fact, the idea of saying the word ‘kiss’ out loud right now was not entirely dissimilar from the concept of bloody, screaming, digit-severing, Spanish Inquisition-level torture.

Pete didn’t speak, though. He didn’t so much as glance at Patrick. But his hand did snake across the space between them and fold itself warmly around Patrick’s own.  
Patrick still had questions. A thousand of them. He still wanted to know what this (they) _was_ (were), if it was anything. He didn’t know what had changed, only that something had; but for now, walking down the street, feeling the sun, being so near to Pete—Pete’s hand on his, comforting and warm and rough and heart-soaring—maybe not for tomorrow. Maybe not for next week. But for right now, in this moment, for Patrick Stump?

This was enough.

 

 

 

**_the end_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You survived! Well done! You've successfully navigated the rocky throes of the band's shaky footing and united Pete and Patrick! Pat yourself on the back, reader. Insert quarter to continue.


	17. Chapter 17

Well, if this was anything, this was his chance for a scot-free getaway to whatever luxury vacation spot he had in mind for his break—his escape.

If he was going to be a coward, Patrick decided, the least he could do was be honest with himself. He wasn’t going to any vacation spot. He was, in all likelihood, catching the next flight back to Chicago so he could have a good long sulk.

Sulking, he assured himself and anyone who might be listening to his thoughts, could be every bit as therapeutic as a week in Aruba. In fact, he thought defiantly, the cathartic properties of a good long sulk were drastically underrated in the modern world. Back in the classical ages, and the Renaissance, they knew where it was at. Artists would brood for days. Hell, Shakespeare wrote entire acclaimed plays about sulking, hadn’t he? And it always turned out pretty well for the people in Shakespeare’s plays. A little tragedy was healthy every now and then, right?

Patrick wondered where he could go to get a break from _himself_. He was beginning to get on his nerves.

He left a note at the front desk of the hotel so the guys didn’t think he’d been kidnapped by hostile fangirls and took the stairs to be sure he didn’t run into Andy or Joe. Andy especially had a canny sense for trickery, and what he was up to was downright deceptive. Anyway, anyone who knew anything about Patrick Stump would _not_ look for him on any one of the fifteen flights of stairs he now fought his way up. When there are at least four perfectly functioning elevators and, for that matter, a very feasibly constructed and easily operated pulley system, one doesn’t look for anyone but a madman on fifteen flights of stairs. That is just not something you voluntarily commit yourself to, Patrick could vouch after heaving his way to the top. He was embarrassingly sweaty, and all was nearly lost when, just as he emerged from the stairwell, Joe stepped out of his hotel room down the hall. Inconvenient bastard! Patrick cursed wildly, silently, as he ducked back behind the access door. Trust Joe to ruin everything. Goddamn guitarists, what were they good for?

Reminding himself that _he_ was a guitarist, Patrick poked his head out to check. Joe had gone back into his suite for something—probably a forgotten room key or wallet. That was a pretty Joe thing to do. He was pretty severely winded by this point, and his legs were considering a flat-out strike, but he knew he only had one chance. Joe would reemerge at any moment. He took a deep breath, readied his own room key, and vaulted out of the safety of the stairwell and across the hall. He reached his door, stubbed his toe on it, dropped his room key in his panic, swore out loud and just barely gained safety before Joe was back in the hallway. Patrick had slammed his own door rather loudly and, even as he pressed his back against it panting in physical exertion and terror, Joe rapped his fist on the other side.

“Patrick? That you?” he called.

There were two courses of action that immediately sprang to mind. One: Patrick could pretend to be a maid. Two: he could engage a battle of wits while disguising his voice and try to convince Joe he had the wrong room.

 

 

**PATRICK PRETENDS TO BE A STEREOTYPICAL HISPANIC MAID, EMBRACING RACIAL STEREOTYPES AND DEGRADING HIMSELF.**  
…turn to ch 20 and continue reading.

**PATRICK ATTEMPTS TO CONVINCE JOE HE HAS THE WRONG ROOM WHILST DISGUISING HIS VOICE.**  
…turn to ch 21 and continue reading.


	18. Chapter 18

“Nothing,” Patrick said with utter conviction, a little alarmed at himself. “It’s nothing.” Had he really considered, even for a moment…? That was dangerous thinking. Kissing Pete in a furniture shop with rabid fangirls on their tail—oh, that was dangerous thinking indeed. That was even a little racy for his own personal fantasies, even though he knew he’d probably indulge in reflecting on it wistfully later on. Not that Patrick’s fantasies were very enjoyable. They were never halcyon or even particularly sexy. They were tepid, guilt-ridden little things, unable to escape their shame even within the confines of his masturbatory imagination. It’s not like he was proud or anything. Even if he did manage to conjure up a decent being-brave-enough-to-kiss-Pete-in-a-furniture-store fantasy, he was certain that halfway through it Pete’s phone would ring and Ashlee would be hysterical and tell him that Bronx had died, or Pete himself would pull away and call Patrick disgusting, or maybe the fangirls would turn out to actually be fast zombies (a.k.a. the worst thing that could possibly happen to anyone, ever). It wasn’t just real life that fucked with Patrick Stump—his subconscious was in on it too.

He was almost certainly imagining it, but Patrick could have sworn Pete looked a little dejected as he slumped back onto his heels, saying, “Oh. I just thought… I mean, you looked like there was… I don’t know. Never mind.”

Nothing in life a firm ‘never mind’ couldn’t cure, that was the Stump motto. Patrick was going to embroider it on a pillow one of these days. He accepted Pete’s dismissal with hearty approval.

For the rest of the day, Pete seemed slightly angry with Patrick. He kept shooting him these darkly significant looks as if he were about to say something. Whenever Patrick worked up the gumption to ask timidly if there was possibly maybe something wrong, Pete would snarl, “ _It’s nothing,_ ” in a tone that was a great deal more unpleasant than Patrick found necessary. Still, it didn’t become particularly evident until Pete harangued an elderly woman into switching seats with him on the plane that night. He claimed his current seat was making him nauseous, and as it was the one next to Patrick’s, Patrick couldn’t help feeling like it was some kind of veiled stab at him.

Halfway through the flight, Patrick decided he couldn’t take it anymore. “Hey, Pete,” he called meekly across the aisle and one row ahead, to where Pete now sprawled unceremoniously. The elderly woman scowled at him, as if to say that if they intended on shouting across the aisle they might as well have sat next to each other. Patrick, while quite agreeing, couldn’t help but feel like the world was out to get him today. There had been that bastard of a waiter, the fangirls, the bossy old lady in the furniture store, Pete’s apparent PMS, and now this old bag snarking at him with her eyes. Why, he wondered without the slightest trace irony, couldn’t people just say whatever it was they were damned well thinking and be done with it? It would make his life exponentially less complicated.

Pete studiously ignored him. He ignored him to the extent that Patrick would have had an existential crisis on the spot had the old bag not huffed noisily at him. He ignored him so thoroughly and with such dedication that, Patrick thought, he ought to write a book on snubbing. He ought, in fact, to teach a course. He had clearly upped the ante of the whole game, and Patrick anticipated the imminent release of Pete’s annotated version of the Fuck You Handbook without much excitement.

“Pete,” he hissed, more loudly now. He knew that if he began to inconvenience the people around them enough, Pete wouldn’t be able to stand it. A woman with a fussy toddler at last asleep beside her shot him a look that clearly meant “if you wake him up I will K-I-L-L _kill_ you”.

“Pete!” Patrick said more loudly, leaning out into the aisle so that no one could pass. A man on his way to the bathroom began to grumble and say, “Ex _cuse_ me,” with increasing pitch and volume.

This was Pete’s breaking point. “For the love of _god_ , Patrick, _what_?” he hissed, whipping around in his seat to glare fiercely back at Patrick. The woman with the toddler looked even more affronted as the man with the straining bladder elbowed his way past forcefully. The old bag stabbed Patrick ‘accidentally’ with one of her knitting needles. He was officially the least popular person on the flight, and he took a strange kind of pride in that.

“I was just wondering,” Patrick said casually, as if he wasn’t in love with Pete, as if there weren’t at least four separate people on the plane who wanted him dead, as if it had not been one of the worst days of his life and, most importantly, as if his band was not falling apart all around him, “if something was the matter.”

Pete glared fiercely. _All of_ this _for_ that? his eyes seemed to say. They said it in a rather nasty voice, as well; Patrick didn’t like their tone. “How many times today do I have to tell you,” Pete spat, “ _it’s nothing_?”

Patrick shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Well, yeah, that’s the thing. That sounds a bit… a bit like what I said to you earlier, doesn’t it? And it’s just that you’ve been saying it ever _since_ then, so I thought that there might be a correlation between the two events…?” He trailed off hopefully.

“Oh, very well _done_ , Patrick. A keen observer, that’s what you are. _So_ glad you pieced it together,” Pete said angrily, voice climbing rather inconsiderately. He was getting hard to ignore. People even outside of Patrick’s fan club began to look annoyed.

“I don’t want to leave things like this,” Patrick said firmly, as if Pete had ever been a creature adherent to Patrick’s desires.

“I wish you would,” Pete shot back, sounding nastier still. “Leave, I mean. Let me get some goddamn rest so I can muster a smile when my wife and child greet me at the airport, yeah?” He was filling his nouns with particular malice this evening, Patrick noticed.

“I’ll just call you when I get home then, okay?” Patrick struck a compromise. “And we’ll talk about it then.”

Pete’s voice rose so sharply that everyone on the plane began to eavesdrop whether they wanted to or not, wrenching himself sideways into his seat to face Patrick. “There is _nothing_ for us to talk about!” he was in the middle of exclaiming when, without warning, a steward plowed into his legs and toppled over, in the process of which what seemed like at least six gallons of ice water liberated itself from the glasses he’d been carrying a moment ago and, as if remotely controlled to do so, dumped itself all over Patrick’s lap.

That did it.

It was officially the worst day of his life.

 

As it turned out, it wasn’t. The next day was—or maybe the day after that. Certainly it was the next Wednesday, or a hybrid of that first aimless weekend. And if it wasn’t those, it just _had_ to be the Monday after.

Really—and the moral of the story was this—it was getting rather difficult to judge, based on the generally sucky quality of all of his days since returning home from the tour.  
Patrick wandered around his apartment, feeling transient. He wandered around the city, feeling meaningless. He fucked about with his drum machine and wondered if there was any sort of purpose whatsoever to his life.

Generally, he felt sorry for himself.

He missed the guys. He missed the band. He missed speaking to people who weren’t himself. He stopped doing sit-ups and started eating donuts. He let his guitar gather dust and whiled away hours that he would never get back on stupid internet sites devoted to drunk texting.

He checked his phone at least twice every five minutes to see if Pete had called yet.

He really, really, _really_ missed Pete.

Touring was something special. It was spending months on the road with no permanent address or toothbrush, crammed into close quarters and stressful situations with your bandmates until you could identify their every freckle and there wasn’t a piece of clothing you owned that didn’t have at least one of their hairs on it and you generally want to serve up a batch of suicide Kool-Aid and spare everyone the agony of another moment of each other’s company.

It was staying up long into the night sprawled on hotel room beds with questionably discolored mattresses laughing and talking and becoming so ridiculously comfortable with one another that it was like having three brothers that you liked better than your real ones and also hated more than Khan. It was getting on stage night after night and feeling like you had all the power in the world, that you were reaching into hearts and changing the way they beat, that for a few hours at least you were really, truly, part of something. It was not sharing Pete with anybody, even when he did disgusting things like leave his dirty underwear at the bottom of his duffle bag for the first half of the tour and buying new ones instead of washing them, even when he dragged Patrick out of bed at all hours of the night to talk about a crazy idea he’d just had or watch game show reruns from the 70s on flickering hotel TVs. 

It was the worst and best thing that a person could do to himself, and it was the only thing that really made Patrick feel alive. He knew he’d had a life before the band, he did—but now, if he wasn’t on stage or the road or in a recording studio, he wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself, how to live. It wasn’t like he had a day job. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do.

It wasn’t like he had a lot of friends or anything.

Joe and Andy both maintained a furlough policy after tour. They insisted on a minimum of two weeks without contact from Patrick (and, he suspected, _only_ Patrick) so that they could recollect themselves and reestablish themselves with their families. That was all very well and good for them—they _had_ families. They were _able_ to escape from Patrick’s whining, unrequited love.

Patrick was not.

He was going to spend the rest of his life like this, he realized. Alone, rambling, half-mad, bullying his friends away from their families to take care of him and accumulating an entire menagerie of pet birds. The thought was horrifying.

This was getting rather pathetic, Patrick decided. It was time for another life inventory. It was time to figure out where he stood and how he felt about it. And then it was time to move to a phase life inventories had never taken him before—he was going to collect the information, and then he was going to figure out what to _do_ with it.

So:

He had been home for twelve days. He had not left the apartment in four. He couldn’t look at anything, or think about anything, or do anything, without it reminding him of what he was missing.

He missed Pete.

He missed Pete, and he was going to spend his _life_ missing Pete, because he would never—not ever—have him.

And that was just something he was going to have to live with.

 

 

 

**WHERE DOES PATRICK GO FROM HERE?**

**IF PATRICK DECIDES HE _CAN’T_ LIVE WITH IT (AND CONSIDERS TAKING DRASTIC MEASURES)…**  
…turn to chapter 23 and continue reading.

**IF PATRICK DECIDES TO START LIVING RIGHT THIS INSTANT (AND TAKES SIMILARLY DRASTIC BOOZE-RELATED MEASURES)…**  
…turn to chapter 25 and continue reading.


	19. Chapter 19

“That,” Patrick said with a joyless smile, “is a very funny question.” Pete looked utterly nonplussed, anger still seething around him in search of an outlet. From the sound of things, Patrick was very considerately in the process of providing just such an outlet.

“Of course, it probably doesn’t seem humorous to you,” Patrick went on, feeling a little crazed, “because you have no idea what you’re asking, do you?”

Pete frowned, still angry, still confused. “I’m definitely getting the idea that you’re mentally unstable, if that’s what you mean,” he muttered ineffectually.

“My problem,” Patrick began ceremoniously, biting back the mad urge to laugh. He was definitely losing his mind. For the last few weeks, confession had been on the tip of his tongue, as had madness; but if he was truly considering telling Pete—!

Maybe he _was_ mentally unstable.

“My problem began long ago,” Patrick said. “Years, in fact. You might remember the beginning of it—or at least, the beginning of the problematic part.” Pete still looked utterly bewildered, and Patrick, in his madness, was beginning to quite enjoy the feeling of, just this once, having the upper hand. Possessing knowledge that Pete did not had never felt like an advantage before. He had always viewed it as a burden. That, Patrick reflected, may have been where he went wrong.

“We were out for dinner,” Patrick began to recount airily, waiting for a look of horror and recognition to dawn on Pete’s face. “I wanted to tell you then, you know. I tried to tell you then.” Pete’s face, as predicted, began to fall. “And you… well. It was actually pretty similar to what I did to you today, wasn’t it? So you’re probably in the perfect place to imagine how I felt.” Pete’s face had fallen further still. “Except… I wasn’t haranguing you about waffles, was I? I was trying to bare my soul. I was trying to tell you the most important, most devastating truth I know. And you walked out, Pete. You left me there alone, abandoned, hopelessly in love with you… and I guess you could say that’s where my problem really began.”

Pete looked a little bit like he wanted to die. His anger had drained away, leaving his dark-skinned face white and bloodless, and he didn’t seem able to think of any words. There it was, at last: the crushing truth, out loud, between them.

In a strangled voice, Pete forced out, “You used to love me?”

Control, so briefly his, began to spiral away again. _Used to_? Patrick wanted to scream. If it was _used to_ , how would that be any explanation for Patrick’s behavior at brunch? An overreaction over the fat thing? A long-simmering vicious desire for passive-aggressive revenge? Because if that had been his plan all along, Patrick would have been sure to strand Pete in a restaurant soon enough after the event that Pete would actually remember it, not wait three years and do a surprise payback kind of thing. Or at least, if that had been his plan, he would have made it more elaborate, like arranging in advance to have the waiter bring out balloons and a card or something with the words “You’ve been served!” in it. Patrick was glad that he hadn’t chosen this route. The waiter at the café they’d been to doubtlessly would have flubbed up the balloon bit. Now _that_ was passive aggression.

“I still love you, Pete,” Patrick said quietly, meeting Pete’s eyes. He was only brave enough to do this because of how angry he was about being misunderstood. It was time, Patrick felt, for him to be able to talk about his feelings in an open and honest way without Pete either avoiding or _deliberately misconstruing_ what he had to say. Pete didn’t want to hear it or believe it or even think about it for a second, Patrick got that. But for the love of god, it was time! They couldn’t go on pretending Pete was a moron forever. It was insulting to the intelligence of everyone involved.

“This shouldn’t come as a surprise to you,” Patrick added with a little more heat in his voice. From the knee socks onward, subtlety had never been his game. “I have every reason to believe you’ve been aware of this for some time now. Maybe even the whole time. Even if you didn’t want to admit it, to yourself or anyone else.”

“I have—” Pete started painfully, looking mystified and shell-shocked and hurt.

“A wife,” Patrick filled in for him, pretty tired of the game by now. “And a child. Yeah, I know. I was at the wedding and the christening and all that. But listen, Pete—you asked, didn’t you? This time it wasn’t me throwing it at you. This time it’s not my fault.”

“I just—” Pete stammered out, trying again.

“Wanted some kind of explanation, yeah,” Patrick interrupted again. “Very much the way I felt when you walked out on me, I know.” The more he thought about it, the better the whole idea of his brunch walk-out as part of a passive-aggressive that-shows-Pete revenge agenda seemed. He wished he’d thought of it himself. The real truth—that he was run off by an ill-tempered waiter—well, it was a little embarrassing. Extreme and lingering pettiness was beginning to look more attractive by the minute.

“But you wouldn’t have been happy with any explanation I could have given you,” Patrick went on before Pete could try to speak. “You would have seen through me. You always have. You would have wanted to know, after all this time, the real whole truth. So there it is. You have it now. I know that you don’t feel the same, and I know that nothing will ever come of it, and I know I will die as old and alone as my aunt Muriel and probably be the cat lady of the whole apartment complex, but I still feel…” Patrick swallowed hard. The idea of being the resident cat lady had struck a more emotional chord within him than he’d anticipated. He didn’t really like cats. “I still feel like it’s a good thing, you knowing. Both of us finally admitting what you’ve known all along.”

“Can I—” Pete tried one more time, this time looking lost and pleading and a little annoyed.

“Talk now?” Patrick interrupted one last time, just because he could. “Yeah. Feel free. I’ve said my part.”

Silence stretched between them. Pete took a deep breath, gathering himself, reigning in his fierce desire to punch Patrick in the face for cutting him off so accurately so many times. “Okay. Thank you,” he said, doing a long, slow, blink so he could keep his eyes shut as he sped past the point of no return. It was a chilling place to watch whip past you, Patrick knew. “First, I would just like to say that you talk too much,” he said, frowning disapproval at Patrick.

Patrick opened his mouth to request clarification but, as he probably deserved, Pete barged on before he could get so much as a throat-clearing in. “And second,” he said, raising his voice over Patrick’s nonexistent words, “I want to say… I don’t know what I want to say.” Pete’s resolve seemed to collapse. He sunk heavily onto Patrick’s bed, almost disappearing in between the folds of the rumpled comforter.

“I guess,” Pete said, voice muffled by the hands he’d clamped to his face, “I want to say that I’m sorry.”

“For—”

“Yes, for walking out on you. Keep your damn mouth shut for once,” Pete snapped, not unkindly. “And for… you know… pretending that I didn’t know… how you felt.” Pete moved his hands a fraction higher to massage his forehead and hide his eyes, leaving his mouth to work freely. “I guess I thought that if I ignored it… it would just go away.”

Patrick, who hadn’t expected any kind of warm reception, was still a little stung. He decided he would apologize in a nasty voice for not going away sooner, and he’d get right on doing that, and then maybe go off himself in the bathroom just to stick it to Pete, but before he could even consider implementing this plan Pete began to speak again, and he found himself too transfixed to turn away.

“But it hasn’t, has it? I mean obviously.” Pete laughed a little, still mashing his hands in slow concentric circles over his eyes. “ _Obviously_ you still feel this way, and obviously no matter how hard I pretend we’re both going to… to be this way. And I don’t know if I can stand to… keep thinking these thoughts, Patrick.” Pete removed his palms from his eye sockets at last and squinted up at Patrick, who wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself. “I mean… it’s all the what-ifs, isn’t it? They’ll drive me mad.” Pete gave a hard little laugh, one that quite clearly said that there was nothing humorous left in the world to laugh at. “They’re already driving me mad,” he said more softly.

Patrick wasn’t quite sure what Pete was trying to say.

“Can I—um—speak now?” he asked, not without truculence.

“Yes. _Feel free_ ,” Pete quoted him with another bitter little laugh.

“Okay. Well, Pete, the thing is,” Patrick said, each word like a weight leaving his chest, “I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to say. Or do, really,” he added, realizing he wasn’t sure on that count either.

Pete stared at Patrick incredulously. “What _I’m_ trying to do? _You’re_ the one picking fights with waiters—and, apparently, café mirrors—and confessing your undying gay love! And you want to know what _I’m_ trying to do?”

Patrick winced. “You heard about the mirror, then.”

“I may have bribed a few staff members,” Pete admitted, smiling a little. “But you disappeared on me! I had to make sure you weren’t kidnapped by raving fangirls! If anyone’s going to be making ransom demands, I want to know in advance.” His smile widened a little. It was hopeless, all of it was; but it was funny, too. Depending on how you looked at it, it was almost desperately funny. “You know, so I could get a jump on drafting my refusal.”

Patrick laughed at that, and it was a relief to do so. The tension in the air gave a little. It wasn’t broken, not by a long shot, but at least there was wiggle room now, in the space left by their laughter. Pete smiled at him, eyes crinkling, and it was the most beautiful thing Patrick had ever seen.

“So,” Patrick prompted. “What if?”

Pete’s smile faded, replaced with something new and not entirely welcome. It was a brittle, grim perversion of his usual easy grin, and Patrick knew from experience that it never meant anything good.

“What if I didn’t have a wife, or a son? What if you’d loved me before all that, and come to me then?” Pete’s lips tightened again in that painful sort of smile. He spread his hands helplessly. “I… I don’t know, Patrick. Would’ve been a disaster, probably. Or maybe something else—something better. Something enduring. Maybe we’d be having a very different conversation right now, today. Maybe I would have had a very different wedding. Maybe—” and Pete found he couldn’t speak any longer, throat constricted with the weight of worlds yet unsaid and the oceans of tears that came along with them. “I don’t know,” he whispered helplessly, tears starting to slide down his dark cheeks even as his lips quivered in the shape of that damnable smile. “I really just—I don’t—”

Patrick slumped onto the bed beside him, feeling miserable. This was—this was everything he’d ever expected. He’d never thought, not really, that Pete would scream and rage and slam doors in his face and threaten his life; that had not been the worst that he’d feared, not ever.

This had been it. This had been what he’d always known was coming, and, when life finally caught up to you and ran you down, it wasn’t as much of a relief as you’d expect. Sure, it was nice to finally stop running; but it was much nicer overall to not get run over in the first place, even if you were pretty tired of slogging onward, even if you were out of breath and achy and ready for a rest.

“I know,” Patrick said quietly, voice a little broken. “I… do you really think we might have had something?”

Pete dropped onto his back, sinking further into the comforter, tears falling freely now. “Maybe,” he said in a small voice, sounding miserable. “Maybe not.”

“I am sorry,” Patrick offered. It was the only thing he had. Sorry he hadn’t said it sooner, sorry he’d said it at all, sorry he felt it.

A small smile touched on Pete’s lips, even through the tears, and Patrick knew he was wrong. It wasn’t the smile from earlier—it was this, this small and sad and defeated but still kind little look. _This_ was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. _This_ was the most beautiful moment of his life.

“I’m not,” Pete said softly. Those words, they were all that Patrick and Pete would ever, could ever have; maybe someday, when they were old and grey and Bronx was grown and gone, when the band was a distant memory and this moment was all but forgotten, maybe then they could try again at something more; or maybe in the next life, or the one after, they’d finally get it right. But none of that mattered so much, not right now, not to Patrick; because Pete had said “I’m not”, and that was all Patrick needed, and everything he couldn’t live without.

 

 

 

**_the end_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Achievement unlocked: sad ending. But don't worry! There are happy ones in here too! See if you can find them.


	20. Chapter 20

“Qué?” Patrick was horrified to hear himself squeak out in a heavily accented and exceedingly poor version of one of the few Spanish phrases he knew. It was a gamble he was taking, here, that Joe knew even less Spanish than he did; that Joe was no smarter than an exceptionally slow brick and would not recognize his disguised voice immediately.

As much as it pained him to say it, as much as he liked Joe, it wasn’t too much of a risk.

“Patrick?” Joe repeated, undeterred.

“Es housekeeping,” Patrick squeaked next, lisping a little in his extreme racism. He was going to hell for this—and not just the rung for the gays anymore. Now he’d be going to the rung for the _racist_ gays that had once shoplifted a Transformers toy from Wal-Mart when they were in junior high that turned out not to be that cool anyway. It was probably, Patrick reflected, a pretty lonely rung of hell, and an especially depressing one. “Housekeeping!” he trilled a little more loudly, lisping heavily.

There was a moment of silence and Patrick feared he had been discovered. “But we’re checking out today,” Joe said instead. _Don’t think this one through, Joe_ , Patrick begged silently. _It’s not worth the brainpower. Just walk away. Just let it go._ “So you should probably just wait an hour, and then—”

“Tengo… no ingles,” Patrick squeaked, and then repeated, “ _Housekeeping_ ,” because apparently Joe hadn’t gotten it. “Housekeeping de Mexico!” he added, forgetting most of his falsetto in his adamancy.

“Pues… lo siento, señora. Pensé que estuviste mi amigo Patrick,” Joe called back through the door, somehow, mercifully, despite his apparently masterful grip of Spanish, believing it. Sometimes it was just unfair how lucky he could be in the stupid little parts of life that no one cared about, and how phenomenally ill-fated in the ones that really mattered.

Still, just to be certain, he held his breath until he heard Joe’s footsteps padding away from the door. Pretending to be a Hispanic maid had, against all impossible odds, been the right choice. Patrick breathed a sigh of relief.

Following the trial he’d just been through—and beaten, thanks very much—packing his things and sneaking back out of the hotel was relatively easy. After all, there was little chance of running into either Joe or Andy on the stairs (they being sane individuals), and it was a quick dart across the lobby and out the door. He dropped his room keys on the front desk without a word and hoped that the guys would work out that they should check out of his room as well; if that gave them too much credit for intelligence (or, at least, relative awareness), it wasn’t really a catastrophe, because it wasn’t _his_ credit card that the hotel had on file. No; one way or another, it would sort itself out. Not Patrick’s problem.

Luck apparently favoring him, his trip to and through the airport was similarly complication-free. As this novel has achieved sentience and is just as impatient to get to the good bits as you are, fair reader, suffice to say that the whole of the flight passed without much incident, and simply

 

 

**TURN TO CHAPTER 22 AND CONTINUE READING.**


	21. Chapter 21

“Uh, excuse me?” Patrick called through the door, pitching his voice low and trying to add a little bit of a redneck twang. Native to Northern Illinois, it wasn’t hard for him to do; he’d spent his whole life just 100 miles of corn from honest-to-god farmers and hicks. He could handle the accent.

It was subtle, though—subtle enough that Joe, now sounding puzzled, wasn’t entirely sure if it was Patrick or not. This was actually ideal. Patrick wanted Joe as disoriented as possible. “Patrick? Are you in there?”

Patrick now took great care to let annoyance proportional to being accosted through your door by a stranger seep into his new twangy voice. “’Fraid not,” Patrick called out. This plan may not have been the best one. It might in fact have been better done to tackle Joe and knock him unconscious in the hallway. Patrick doubted his own ability to accomplish either of these things.

Patrick tried very hard to sound as if he drove—or even owned—a truck as he went on, planting a seed of doubt in Joe’s mind. “Must have the wrong room,” he urged, exerting his Jedi will.

“No, this is Patrick’s room,” Joe insisted, resisting mind control. Patrick wondered if things would have to come down to force. He wasn’t much for force.

“’Fraid not!” Patrick repeated, sounding (and feeling) what he felt was a realistic level of annoyance.

Not sounding entirely convinced _or_ apologetic—the nerve of some people!—Joe plodded on, “Sorry, then. Guess I got confused…”

Patrick heard a nearby door close and relaxed. Joe must have given up and retreated to his room to scratch at his head and puzzle things through, Patrick decided.

He had never been less enthused at the sound of Andy’s voice. “What’s going on out here?” he heard Andy ask Joe. Andy, too, sounded annoyed. No one liked to be disturbed the morning—or early afternoon—after a show, especially at the ass end of a tour, especially not with a flight to look forward to, especially not with the band’s future so ambiguous.

Overestimating the thickness of the door, Joe said in what was a perfectly acceptable volume for a speaking voice but less suited to furtive whispering, “I think there’s a man in there robbing Patrick.”

Andy’s voice of reason sang with disbelief. Patrick would not have minded unduly if they’d chalked it up to a burglary and left it at that, but _nooo_ , Andy had to be sensible.

“That’s ridiculous,” he said sensibly. Patrick wanted very badly to strangle the both of them. He would wrap their bodies in bedsheets, he decided, and kind of flop them out the window. He’d seen a body dealt with like this in a movie before, and it had actually worked out pretty well. Of course, there probably wasn’t a dumpster below his own window. That would complicate things.

“But there’s someone _in_ there!” Joe was insisting to Andy. “And it’s _not_ Patrick!”

Well, at least he’d gotten that much of it taken care of. Not that they seemed even remotely willing to leave him alone or anything convenient like that, but they were definitely sold on him being some stranger. If only he’d been more convincing with the salient point that this was not his own room but, in fact, the twangy truck-driving stranger’s.

“Is it housekeeping?” Andy asked, still maddeningly sensible. _Damn it_ , Patrick thought. _Should’ve pretended to be a maid_.

“I don’t think so,” said Joe. “There’s no cart, is there? And anyway, it’s a guy.”

Once Patrick was inevitably discovered, he vowed to give Joe a talking-to about stereotyping, never mind that he most definitely would have pretended to be a middle-aged Hispanic woman if he were to feign being a maid.

Andy had dropped his voice to a hiss; apparently it was okay if a burglar overheard them speaking, but not some random redneck that happened to be in Patrick’s suite. Patrick had never really appreciated before how strange his bandmates really were. He pressed his ear to the door.

“What if Patrick brought someone home last night?” Andy asked in an excited whisper. “What if that guy in there is Patrick’s first lay in eight months, and you’re standing out here shouting at him?”

Patrick was a little hurt. _This_ was what happened when you took Andy into your confidence? He turned around and told everybody about it? Up to and including _Joe_ , boy wonder? It’s not like he was _proud_ of his celibacy streak. It’s not like he wanted people to _know_ about it. For god’s sake—and Patrick allowed himself a chuckle at his own irony—not even _monks_ bragged about how long it had been since their last sexual endeavor, and for them at least it was a badge of _honor_.

Patrick considered breaking character then and there to chastise Andy (who was, apparently, an astonishingly bad friend!), but before he had the chance Joe was speaking again. He didn’t want to miss a cringe-worthy second. “But he’s in love with Pete, isn’t he?”

He was not that obvious, Patrick consoled himself. He couldn’t _possibly_ be so obvious that _Joe_ —who was rapidly losing esteem in Patrick’s book—noticed. Joe probably hadn’t noticed _gravity_ yet, for god’s sake.

“Maybe he’s finally getting over Pete!” Andy whispered loudly, and Patrick began to hate him too. They were fucking busybodies, his so called friends, weren’t they? Worse than lonely housewives. “Maybe that guy you’re harassing is Patrick’s first step to recovery!”

“Or maybe,” Joe said stubbornly, regaining esteem by his pigheaded refusal to buy into the whole ‘Pete Wentz rehab’ concept, “he’s a burglar.”

Patrick heard the unmistakable sound of Andy smacking Joe on the arm. “Stop being yourself for a minute, will you?” Andy said, exasperated. Then he (apparently) leaned close to the door and yelled into Patrick’s ear, “Excuse me? We’re friends of Patrick’s.”

Patrick leapt away, cradling his burst eardrum in pain. “Will y’all go away?” he cried out, an honest if accented plea. “You got the wrong room!”

Patrick heard the sound of Andy smacking Joe again and knew the game was up. “Bullshit, Patrick,” Andy called through the door. “Let us in.”

“That’s not Patrick,” Joe said, certainty fading.

“Of course it is, you idiot!” Andy cried. By the end of the tour he never had much patience left for any of them.

Patrick caved easily. He would never outsmart Andy, so he accepted his defeat with all the grace he could muster—read, not a whole lot—and opened the door, saying darkly, “You’re a terrible friend.”

Patrick quickly surmised that Andy and Joe had no intention of letting him sneak off to the airport and grab an early flight simply to avoid Pete. (Helpless and besieged, he had told them the whole godforsaken story of the brunch debacle.)

In fact, Andy didn’t seem inclined to leave the room at all. It took Patrick’s solemn vow that he’d strip naked and bathe in the sink right in front of him, and a quick pantomime of what he’d look like with his foot propped on the bathroom counter, to exorcise Andy from the room. He took Patrick’s wallet before he left, calling back “For leverage” over his shoulder.

“Terrible friend!” Patrick repeated loudly to his receding back before slamming the door and putting the chain in, to assure that he was left to his peace.

Peace. Patrick wondered what that even _meant_ to him anymore. He decided he’d meditate on it during a long, hot shower, in between relishing being alone and trying not to think about Pete. Patrick began to feel rather good in spite of himself. A hot shower and then a short flight home—it wouldn’t be so bad. In fact, it was beginning to sound exactly like the peace Patrick felt he sorely needed—and sorely deserved—right about now.

 

 

 

**TURN TO CHAPTER 15 AND CONTINUE READING.**


	22. Chapter 22

He already knew what Andy would say. Andy would say, “Because I’m a nice guy, I’m going to let this slide, Patrick. Now don’t call again for at least a week.”

Joe would not pick up the phone at all.

And Pete… but Patrick didn’t want to call Pete. Calling Pete was the LAST thing Patrick Stump wanted to do. Calling Pete was absolutely not on the agenda.

Yes. You caught him. Patrick wanted to call Pete.

Patrick had been at home for something like ten days, give or take a weekend. At first, he felt pretty clever and smug for sneaking away. He enjoyed a wonderfully relaxing half hour of pure, perfect solitude before he remembered: he hated being alone.

He immediately began having fits of guilt. The guys would be worried about him. Pete was probably angry! He should have just stayed the extra three hours. It wasn’t like anyone was going to publicly debase him on a plane. God, Patrick moaned to himself. He could be so _stupid_ sometimes.

It was just—well, he loved Pete. He loved Pete more than he’d ever loved anyone and it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair because he loved Pete so strongly, so much, with his whole self—and Pete didn’t love him at all. Pete loved Ashlee and Bronx and talking to reporters and leaving the band. Pete loved all the wrong things, and Patrick was going to be alone forever unless he forgot about Pete and found another source of fulfillment.

He loved Pete and it was making him go a little bit crazy.

He reflected briefly on his behavior of the last few days and wondered if it could still be classified as ‘a little bit’ crazy. Maybe by this point he’d gone grand mal crazy and it was just that no one had explained it to him. He’d done some stupid and humiliating things, that was certain; and he’d done them because…

Why? Patrick racked his brain. _Why_ had it seemed necessary, or even advisable, to do the things he’d been doing? From a Pete-free distance, his actions seemed certifiably insane. Being upset that the band might break up and having a crush on your straight bandmate were not the utterly absolving excuses he’d once held them to be. In fact, in the light, with his head clear and Pete too far away to cloud it again, they looked like flimsy, whorish, stupid excuses. Besides which, excuses were not the same as reasons. No matter how good they were, they were still just ways of saying “I did something I shouldn’t have, but you shouldn’t get mad at me because”. If you were going to start a sentence that way, you’d better have a damn good way to end it, and Patrick did not.

Another thing was that there was a hole in Patrick. A big, dark, gaping maw of a void, ready to devour anything he tentatively tried to fill it with (like a nice floral arrangement, maybe, or an ornamental vase) and spit out the bloody pieces.

Patrick was not overly fond of this hole in himself. In fact—and maybe this was just him—it seemed a little melodramatic and unnecessary. A little too Hollywood of a metaphor for abiding personal torment, but there you have it; it was not up to the man to choose the metaphor, only to suffer through it once it had presented itself. And what Patrick was suffering through was a giant, fearsome gaping hole.

Because he had seen a romantic comedy or two (or ninety) in his day, Patrick could speculate as to what might fill this terrifying new metaphor and diminish the pain to the usual manageable ache. And he knew it was Pete. The reason he was depressed and aimless and dying was because he was lonely. And it wasn’t the standard totally-and-completely-in-stubborn-solitude-for-ten-ish-days loneliness, either; it was a specific loneliness, with a face and a name that were all too familiar.

He missed Pete.

That was the long and short of it—the alpha, the omega, the whole fucking sordid story of his life wrapped into one. No matter how they’d left things, he missed Pete. He missed the maddening smile and every annoying second of the whining and speculating and emo song-writing. He missed all the quirks and shortcomings that made this Pete _his_ Pete, and he missed all the glowing wonderful things too, like his laugh and the way his eyes gleamed and the clever one-liners he peppered Patrick’s life and every song with, and the way his eyes got soft and his voice dropped to a low, vibrating hum when he was worried, the way his irises blazed and voice leapt and curled like flame when he was excited, the way his eyes turned sharp and voice rang like steel when he was serious. Patrick missed the curve of Pete’s body, shoulders stretching skin to spine and the roundness of his ass, the sharp little angular lines that guided the eye from his ribcage to his hips; he missed the shaggy hair that fell into his eyes and the way he could spend half an hour on eyeliner alone, cursing and pouting and starting over a thousand times before it looked ‘right’—or, to Patrick, the same as every other time, even the ‘failed’ attempts.

Patrick missed the way Pete would toss and roll and whimper in his sleep, the way he’d sometimes call out and Patrick would go to him, sneaking into the hotel room with a key he shouldn’t have had or creeping across the bus in the middle of the night, and sit on the edge of the bed, and stroke his hair and soothe him; and when Pete woke up he would cling to Patrick, shaking, and make him stay until he fell asleep. Patrick missed the way Pete would grin up wickedly through his bangs, the way he’d say Patrick’s name that sent chills down his spine, the way he spoke to his bass as if it was a person and the way niceties so often devolved into outright arguments with the thing.

Patrick missed everything.

The logical solution—the _only_ solution—was to call him. He had to call him. He had to call Pete, and there was no way around it.

 

 

 

**DON’T BE RIDICULOUS. OF COURSE THERE’S A WAY AROUND IT.**

**IF PATRICK CALLS PETE…**  
…turn to chapter 28 and continue reading.

**IF PATRICK CALLS ANDY TO WHINGE ABOUT PETE (IN BLATANT VIOLATION OF THE FORTNIGHT-OF-PEACE DIRECTIVE)…**  
…turn to chapter 26 and continue reading.


	23. Chapter 23

Although, he didn’t _have_ to live with it. There was always an alternative. He could always…

Well. It was an ugly word, certainly, but there was no harm in exploring his options, was there? He might as well get his facts straight. It’s not like he was committing to anything—just doing a little research.

And so, that settled, Patrick Stump decided to look into suicide.

 

 

Patrick was in a fine mood. He showered for the first time in, judging by the sheer amount of grease that came off his body, several days. He put on a clean sweater and shorts that, if not strictly _clean_ , at least did not smell offensive. He set out for the library, which—it turned out—was only a nine-block walk from his apartment. He’d lived here for two years, and never even realized. Imagine! The joy of this discovery filled him to the brim. Now, Patrick had plenty of internet at home, if admittedly few books, and could do his research without ever leaving the couch, but the apartment was beginning to smell strongly of his body and he was grateful for the outing. He liked suicide already—it was getting him in the shower and out of the house! Maybe he’d even meet somebody.

Suicide, Patrick reflected quite cheerfully, could very well turn out to be the best thing he’d ever done with his life.

The gloom of the day buffered Patrick through his walk. The air was clear and cool in his lungs, tasting of fall, and the overhanging clouds and sense of impending wintery dread only reinforced his conviction that today was the perfect day for his project—that it was, perhaps, meant to be.

The library, too, was serendipitously gloomy; the light was dim and everything was carved of old dark wood. Dust specks danced upon the air, gleaming where the cold grey light filtered through the windows and illuminated their path. The high-ceilinged rooms were silent but for the occasional rustle and breath of fellow patrons, and the air tasted of knowledge, age, and resignation. Even the books looked yellowed and rotting under the low lamplight. It was the perfect picture of a cancerous world, infected with life, slogging into its coffin of defeat even as the last of its blood trickled from a rent in its side. It was delightful.

Humming quietly to himself, Patrick got to work. He spent some time with a card catalog—how wonderfully futile and antiquated! He could have burst out singing—and returned to an empty, deeply scarred table with a towering stack of books, reeking of long years and cracked leather spines.

Hours passed, Patrick immersing himself in statistics, tips, tricks, and techniques. He realized that, for the first time in days, he was hungry. He felt purposeful and alive, and he loved it. He checked out the marginally dwindled stack of books he hadn’t finished with, a tower peppered with titles like _The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, The Bell Jar_ , and _No Time to Say Goodbye_. The squat librarian shot him a disapproving glare, wrinkled chin quivering, no doubt worried that they’d be returned late—or damaged!—if he offed himself. He stuffed the books that he could into his shoulder bag and stacked the rest perilously on top of each other and began the trek home. Nine blocks was a much more substantial journey when it was dark, and chilly, and one was lugging their body weight in books, but Patrick didn’t mind. He even made up a little song to sing to himself, about walking and the night and how beautiful everything was when you were seeing it for the last time. He stopped to pick up take-out and added the steaming cartons to the top of his wobbling load and paid for it with a fifty, refusing to take his change. He dropped his watch into the cup of a shivering, sleeping panhandler, and emptied his wallet into the gnarled, disbelieving hands of another. He had never felt quite like this before, and he was high on the feeling.

Relieved of most of the possessions he’d set out with and one of his cartons of food, Patrick arrived home whistling. He ate ravenously, a creeping excitement flowing over his skin. He read late into the night and didn’t realize he was growing tired until he woke up on his couch at sunrise with his face in a book.

Patrick felt wonderful. He had about a hundred different ideas of how to do the job, and he was feeling pretty confident about things. He was well-rested and had a nice breakfast of leftover pork-fried rice and thought maybe he’d go for a jog, fill up the bathtub, and open his wrists.

 

 

**NOT THAT THERE’S ANY REAL QUESTION, BUT FOR APPEARANCE’S SAKE:**

**IF PATRICK DISMISSES THE IDEA…**  
…turn to chapter 29 and continue reading.

**IF PATRICK GOES THROUGH WITH IT…**  
…turn to chapter 27 and continue reading.


	24. Chapter 24

“What’s _wrong_ with me? Oh, grow up, Pete!” Patrick was startled to hear himself cry. He sounded strong, self-assured, like a guy who had a shot at winning the fight. Usually he was the guy who ended up alone and crying, so it was a pretty nice feeling. He liked being angry; he liked hating Pete. So he stuck with it. He tried out shouting: “I’ve got some kind of personal problem because I don’t piss myself joyful every time you walk into a room, is that it?”

It felt _good_.

“No, you have a personal problem because you _ran the hell away from the table and left me at brunch_!” Pete shot back. Pete, it seemed, wasn’t afraid to shout either.

“Everybody just has to fucking love you, huh?” Patrick lashed out again, loving to feel something that wasn’t lovesick, loving this brand new way to hurt. “You can’t fucking _handle_ being anything but adored—”

“That is so unfair!” Pete yelped, interrupting Patrick’s angry stab, the one aimed at hurt and not caring what it tore apart in between. “I don’t want that from you and you _know_ that! Don’t twist this, Patrick! I want to know why you left me at—”

“ _Left_ you?” Patrick was aware of himself shrieking. He would be well and truly shocked if there was a single person in the hotel that couldn’t hear him right now, and he didn’t _care_. It felt _good_. It was a hot, heady feeling, and he _loved_ it. “How the fuck could I _leave_ you, Pete?!” He relished the word ‘fuck’. Every opportunity to say it was incredible. It tore out of his skin, ripping off pieces of his soul as he screamed it, and he was glad to see them go. “How could I _leave_ someone who isn’t _here_?”

Pete looked confused—no less angry, but confused. “I—what?” He broke off mid-yell, voice going back to a normal volume.

“ _You’re_ the one who left _me_ ,” Patrick repeated, matching his voice to Pete’s, quiet but seething and spitting with fury. “You left me in Chessie’s, Pete, without even a word of explanation. You left me that night in Chessie’s and you’ve been leaving me ever since. So don’t come in here and give me _shit_ because maybe I don’t _worship_ you like I used to and you can’t handle that—”

Pete’s yell was back, so loud and abrupt that it shocked Patrick into silence. “I don’t _want_ that from you!” he screamed, flinging the words like a stinging hail of things more deadly. “I haven’t _ever_ fucking _wanted_ that from you! I just want you to be my goddamn _friend_ , not some pathetic fucking _fangirl_ like the rest of them!”

Pete’s yell died, leaving him surprisingly naked and helpless as he stared at Patrick, eyes still dark and accusing, visibly shaken by the words that had left his own mouth.

“Fuck you, Pete,” Patrick said quietly, staring hard into his friend’s shocked eyes. Pete opened his mouth to say something, anything, to try to make it right, but Patrick wasn’t interested. “Don’t try and fucking talk to me,” Patrick warned. Not after that—maybe not ever again. Patrick couldn’t help but feel that everything was different now. That in some intrinsic, not-quite-tangible way, everything had changed.

Pete hesitated, torn, wrenched between what Patrick commanded and what he knew he should do. “Just go,” Patrick instructed, and, not knowing what else he could do, Pete did.

 

 

**TURN TO CHAPTER 22 AND CONTINUE READING.**


	25. Chapter 25

Patrick couldn’t remember the last time he’d been to a bar. Well—that wasn’t strictly true. He could: Pete had dragged him to one in Germany, during the tour. To rephrase, Patrick couldn’t remember the last time he’d _gone_ to a bar, _of his own volition_ , with a deep desire to become, and then stay, drunk.

It was a little difficult, sometimes, for Patrick to go to a bar. Not just because he was shy and socially awkward and kind of fat—because believe you me, he had knee socks to compensate for those _exact_ factors—or because people sometimes recognized him and made a big deal about it. (Luckily, there were surprisingly few Fall Out Boy fans old enough to hang around bars. He wouldn’t really have to worry for another year or so, when all the shrieking high school girls suddenly became ID-wielding bar terrorists.) No, the reason it was patently difficult for Patrick to go to a bar was simply that, when he was sitting by himself with an approachable smile on his face, he not only looked unapproachable, but also a little like a pedophile. To make matters worse, he couldn’t dance any better than he could sit by himself and look engaging, so clubs were out too.

It was with these mitigating factors in mind that Patrick found himself in the Cubby Bear, where at least there would be some sort of live band or sports game that he could pretend to care about. It was a nice bar—you could tell because there was a cover charge and real menus—and that was good, because he looked like even more of a creepy freak when he was sitting by himself in a dive. Here, he hoped, he would look like part of a larger party that had momentarily detached, and therefore be much less threatening.

He had also considered getting ‘I promise you will not be kidnapped, raped, murdered, or any combination of the above if you talk to (and possibly have a drink with) me’ printed on a t-shirt, but that in itself sounded a little bit like a threat, so he’d refrained. Instead he wore the cleanest sweater he had—the one that transformed his pudgy dorkiness away from ‘pedophile’ and nudged it in the direction of ‘junior high history teacher’, which he was still okay with. Of course, there was some pedophile overlap that came with the territory, but he tried his best to look earnest instead of lecherous and didn’t so much as glance at a single ass.

Despite all of the special tactics, Patrick sat at the bar for hours, getting drunker and drunker, his most meaningful conversation with the bartender. He liked the bartender; he had reddish blond hair and thin lips and crooked teeth, and pale blue eyes that squinted into slits when he smiled. He was a little shorter than Patrick, thin and wiry, and he chatted animatedly at Patrick intermittently throughout the night. The favor of the bartender made him look like a regular, which vouched for his normalcy, and after a few hours a black-haired femme boy wove his way over to where Patrick sat and plopped himself down on the adjacent barstool. Gradually Patrick realized that both Dark-eyed Skinny-jeans and Amiable Bartender—Jamie and Saul, respectively—were flirting with him.

He was a little bit floored by the attention.

He had never been any kind of successful in a bar before.

Patrick’s self-confidence soared. He was losing weight, he was charming, he looked good and the attentions of Jamie boosted the attentions of Saul while the attentions of Saul boosted the attentions of Jamie, and by last call it was an all-out bidding war, each of them imagining him more attractive than he was simply because the other desired him, and Patrick was enjoying being a commodity. Between Saul layering on the free drinks and squeezing Patrick’s arm at every chance he got and Jamie’s hand creeping higher and higher up his leg, he was practically giddy with delight. Giddy—and drunk. Very drunk. Drunk enough that, if he squinted, Jamie looked like a certain love of his life. Drunk enough that, no matter how hard he stared, Saul bore no resemblance. Drunk enough that he couldn’t decide which one he wanted more—a vicarious Pete, who elicited inclinations much too soft and tender for any stranger, or a palette-cleansing, other-side-of-the-spectrum bartender with a toothy smile and a _fine_ ass.

 

 

**JAMIE?**  
…turn to chapter 32 and continue reading.

**SAUL?**  
…turn to chapter 30 and continue reading.


	26. Chapter 26

“You know I’m a nice guy, Patrick,” was the phrase Andy answered the phone with. “That’s why I picked up. By my calculations, I’ve got ‘til the weekend before you’re allowed to call and wax on about Pete, so—and this is me giving you the benefit of the doubt—I figured it must be some kind of emergency.”

Andy could be such a bastard. “Um, hi,” Patrick floundered. Andy’s little speech had totally wiped out the casual opener Patrick had planned—the one designed to divert Andy’s suspicions that the call was even remotely Pete-related. He felt that now it would be suspect if he were to casually inquire into Andy’s health and ask if he’d spoken to Joe recently. It would seem too obvious now. “It’s me,” he added, which Andy already well knew.

“Yeah. So, are you stranded in a crack den or lost in a bad neighborhood?” Andy pressed, his tone of voice implying that any other circumstance would be a huge waste of his time.

“I was wondering if you wanted to get dinner with me?” Patrick asked hopelessly. No matter how quickly the conversation had spiraled out of his control, it was still interminably nice to be speaking to a human being. It was nice to know he hadn’t imagined the existence of other human beings. He had been beginning to suspect that he and the delivery boy from the Indian place he’d been exclusively living off of were the only two people left alive, or that maybe he was actually in a laboratory cleverly disguised as an apartment building so that evil scientists could study the effects of solitude and madness on an atypical American male.

He had also briefly entertained the idea that he was a table lamp, but that hadn’t held up to scrutiny for very long.

Andy’s voice was guarded. “Patrick, you know I love you,” he said carefully. “But the statute—”

Patrick knew the statute by heart. The statute said that Andy and Joe were entitled to fourteen whinge-free days following any prolonged exposure to Patrick (in excess of 21 days). They had families, was their plea. Andy had his comic books to catch up on. (They had a way of piling up while he was on tour. Time didn’t always allow him to hunt down his latest issues in whatever city they were in.) They both had their sanity, and apparently were interested in preserving it. Patrick, who had recently spent some quality time as a table lamp, couldn’t imagine why.

What Patrick said was, “The statute, Andy? Really? It’s been, what—twelve days? How many comic books can you possibly have to read?”

This was an inadvisable tack, but could be effective if played right. Andy’s voice grew defensive. “Hey, that’s not fair. We were gone for months, man! And I get like 20 titles a month!”

“Right, yeah, and I have always respected that,” Patrick lied. “But listen. We all lived together in this big happy pod for how many weeks? And now my apartment feels really empty and quiet, and I’m bored and lonely and thought, hey, Andy’s my friend, he’s a really cool amazing guy, he’ll want to do whatever he can to help because that’s what _friends_ do, and Andy’s always been a really good friend to me, and I know he wouldn’t want me to be unhappy when he could help so much just by getting dinner with me—”

“Why don’t you work on your movie?” Andy tried, knowing he was losing the fight. Patrick was laying it on thick, and it was working. “I mean, you sound like a guy who needs to immerse himself in a creative project, not waste his youth on the phone with me.”

Patrick was impervious to this kind of clever attack. He wasn’t feeling creative. He loathed _Moustachette_ right now, and it felt pointless to write new songs when he might not have a band to produce them with. Some of the guys from his side projects had left voicemails, but Patrick had not even deigned to listen to them. He’d pretty much only been checking his voicemail to delete all the messages that weren’t from Pete, which was all of them.

“It’s just dinner, Andy. Like an hour of your life,” Patrick pressed.

“More like four hours,” Andy said stubbornly. “When you factor in the commute.” Patrick did not have a car, and Andy lived in Milwaukee. In fairness, the drive from Milwaukee to Chicago could not be considered a brief jaunt.

“Then why don’t you spend the night up here?” Patrick made a fatal mistake there, sounding a little too excited, a little too desperate. It was one thing to come off as pathetic, because Andy was highly susceptible to pity. Enthusiasm was less effective.

“Yeah, that sounds great,” Andy agreed, almost sincere. “So have you talked to Pete?”

Patrick was almost entirely certain that this was a trap. “Uh, no…?” Patrick said. Unsure of how to proceed, he did what came naturally and told the truth. He was not very good at deception.

Andy might as well have yelled ‘eureka!’ for the smug satisfaction in his tone. “Well, I haven’t either,” he said, quite pleased. “So I can’t tell you anything about him. You should try Joe. I think they’ve hung out.”

Patrick was stung. What was Pete doing hanging out with Joe? Sure, they’d been friends since high school, but he hadn’t even _bothered_ to call Patrick—and after the fight they’d had, it sort of seemed like talking to Patrick and making things right might have been a priority of his. Certainly more important than hanging out with _Joe_. Stupid Joe.

“But Andy—” Patrick whined, but he was too late. Andy had hung up the phone, and Patrick knew from experience he would not be answering when he called again.

For good measure, Patrick spent the next fifteen minutes calling Andy over and over, until at last it went straight to voicemail and he achieved the satisfaction of knowing that Andy had had to turn off his phone just to get some peace. He didn’t know why this was a victory, but it made him feel a little better, and he was instating a firm policy of taking what he could get.

Patrick took a few moments to mentally prepare himself, and then he called Joe.

 

“Joe, buddy!” Patrick yelped into the phone the moment Joe picked up. “What’s up?”

Joe groaned. “I’m gonna kill Andy,” he muttered. “He told you, didn’t he? I knew he’d tell you. Always throws me under the goddamn bus.”

Patrick did not much like being called a bus. Was it a weight comment? Why did everyone find it necessary to _make_ those? He’d been getting thinner, damnit! He’d never seen _Joe_ put any work into _his_ waistline, and to be perfectly honest, he wasn’t exactly slim.

“Andy? I haven’t even talked to Andy,” Patrick lied coolly.

“Like hell you haven’t!” Joe cried. “He texted me like ten minutes ago warning me you’d call!”

Patrick felt uncomfortable. “Well, it’s obvious he knows how close we are. He’s probably just… um… psychic or something.”

“Patrick. Andy specifically texted me that he’d just gotten off the phone with you and that you’d probably call me any minute.”

Patrick wondered why he was even _friends_ with Andy. The word clearly didn’t mean anything to the man. “Okay, so I talked to Andy,” Patrick caved, having the grace to sound a little abashed. “But only for like a minute! Anyway, he mentioned that you might have spent some time with Pete.” There was no point in being subtle. Joe knew him too well for that—besides which, Andy was a giant snitch and had ruined everything.

“I may have,” Joe said guardedly.

Patrick descended like the harpy he knew he was. “How was he? I mean, did he seem okay? Was he upset at all? Did he mention me? Did he talk about our fight? Do you think he misses me? Did he say anything about the band? Did you—”

“Patrick!” Joe shrieked. “God Jesus! Keep your pants on!” Patrick obediently fell silent. He knew the sound of a broken man; Joe was going to tell him everything. “We didn’t talk about the band and he seemed fine. He was eating, laughing, talking, everything. I don’t think he’s upset.”

“But did he—” Patrick tried, but Joe cut him off firmly.

“We didn’t even _talk_ about you,” he said. “If you want my advice, Patrick, I’ve gotta tell you, you need to let him go, all right? It’s never going to happen.”  
Patrick did not much care for Joe’s advice. “You don’t know that,” he said darkly.

“Yeah, actually I do,” Joe said. “I’ve known Pete for years, okay? And whether I’d talked to you at that Borders or not, whether he liked men or women or everything in between, Pete would never run out on his kid, and he would never run out on Ashlee.” Joe grew quiet and Patrick was at a loss for words. Joe’s voice was softer when he spoke again, kinder. “I’m sorry, man, but you know as well as I do what kind of guy Pete is. I mean—would you even like him so much if he was the kind of guy who could walk away from his family like that?”

Patrick wanted to say that he most certainly would, but couldn’t muster the words. Besides, there was no point in lying to Joe. Joe was—goddamn everything, but Joe was right.  
Patrick would rather die than admit it, so he kept silent and tried not to cry while Joe pressed on.

“What I think you should do—and you might already know, and maybe you don’t care, but as your friend and Pete’s friend I feel like you need to hear it anyway—what I _know_ you should do is put him behind you, Patrick. You need to get over this thing and concentrate on being his friend, because that’s what Pete needs right now.”

“But what if I can’t?” Patrick was mortified to hear himself whimper.

To his eternal credit, Joe didn’t even pause. “You can. I know you can. If you miss Pete and you feel bad about how you left things, you should talk to Pete about it, not me and Andy. And you should go out, too. Get out of the house and, I don’t know, indulge in a one-night stand with somebody pretty. Try to put as much distance between yourself and this mess as you can. It’s not going to be easy, but you’ll be okay, Patrick. All right?”

It was very difficult to speak around the lump in his throat, but Patrick did what he could. “All right,” he mimicked thickly, feeling like nothing so much as if he had been stabbed in the heart, because Joe was right. There wasn’t any way around it, no matter how hard he closed his eyes and wished and hoped and dreamed; Joe was right. Pete Wentz would not ever love him in the way Patrick so desperately wanted to be loved. There was nothing to do but accept that fact—accept it, and do his damndest to move beyond it, even if there was nothing he’d rather do than lay down and die.

Patrick got off the phone and took some deep, steadying breaths. He was going to do the unimaginable: he was going to take Joe’s advice.

The only question now was which to do first.

 

 

 

**IF PATRICK GOES LOOKING FOR A FLING TO HELP HIM GET OVER PETE…**  
…turn to chapter 25 and continue reading.

**IF PATRICK WORKS UP HIS COURAGE AND CALLS PETE…**  
…turn to chapter 28 and continue reading.


	27. Chapter 27

His jog had been short-lived. He made it about one block before he was panting, doubled over, gasping, and, worst of all, receiving contemptuous looks brimming with judgment from the crisply-dressed business people swarming the streets, pouring out of train stations and parking garages and pricy apartment buildings on their way to work. These were people who had treadmills and free weights in their spare bedrooms, people who admired their own tan, firm nakedness in their bathroom mirrors without even the slightest hint of nausea every morning. Patrick, however, felt no animosity towards them. He even felt a little bad for them. Invisible and unthanked, they were office slaves. Even if they worked for the biggest hotel chain or distributor in the world, no one recognized their faces on the street; no one thought about them existing at all.

Patrick, meanwhile, pudge and all, was pictured on bedroom walls across North America. Having done almost nothing to deserve it, having improved their lives and provided services in almost no way, Patrick still found it difficult to go out in public without being accosted with adoration. Sometimes he took steps to disguise himself just to avoid all the shrieking and autograph-signing and being asked the same five questions over and over again, all the while wondering if any of these girls were the really desperate and weird kind, the kind who wrote stories about him and spread them across the internet.

He would bet anything that no one had ever written a story about the glaring business people and put it on the internet. Even if a story _mentioned_ a business person, it never mentioned them by name. It never betrayed alarming amounts of research by accurately reflecting wardrobe, criminal record, address, and familial status of each of them.

Feeling a little smug, Patrick trotted back to his own building, sweating profusely and wheezing like he’d recently had a lung removed. Normally he’d bemoan his lack of fitness, but today Patrick was able to feel pretty cheerful that he’d been motivated enough to try and jog at all. Besides, it wasn’t like his health really mattered anymore, was it?

He whistled to himself in the elevator, frightening its other occupants. Although the orange jogging shorts he’d squeezed into might also be unnerving them. He smiled encouragingly and stopped whistling long enough to brag, “I’ve just been jogging. Lovely day for it. Fall, eh?”

He had a quick rinse under the showerhead to get the sweat off before filling up the tub with warm water. He’d read that that would help the blood flow. He dug out an old straight razor from under his sink and penned a quick note at the kitchen table, which he stuck on top of his pile of library books.

 

_Please return!_

 

he wrote. Then, feeling that his last words ought to be more magnanimous, added,

 

_Love you all—it’s been great._

 

He signed his name at the bottom, satisfied with the overall effect. To him it seemed pleasantly breezy. The light-hearted tone would surely console whoever found him. He realized it would be a rather shocking find for whoever it was, but at least clean-up would be easy. It would all be in the tub, wouldn’t it? No mess. Anyway, it wouldn’t be any of his friends who found him. What with the statute of peace and his and Pete’s fight, they might not notice his absence at all. Of course, he had other friends—other bands, even—but they weren’t going to exactly tear his door off its hinges if he missed a few phone calls. For all they knew, he was still on tour. 

No, it would probably be his landlady, investigating the smell. She was a stout little Polish woman and gave Patrick the faint impression of having withstood unimaginable war, hardship, and horror that had left her equipped to stalwartly clean filthy carpets and pull knots of strangers' hair from drains. A little thing like Patrick’s body would not faze her, not after surviving the plumbing crisis last spring—pipes had frozen, broken, and waste had piled up on the wall of an unrented downstairs unit midwinter. Then it had thawed and burst free in late March. It had easily been the most horrible thing Patrick had ever seen or smelled, but little Ivona had only put on rubber gloves and rain boots under her house dress and strode into the melee without hesitation. The exsanguinated floating corpse of a former tenant would not even rattle a woman capable of that.

Assured of his discoverer’s fortitude and feeling pretty good about the whole thing, Patrick had only just sunk into the steaming tub when his buzzer began to grind.

Patrick wasn’t expecting anyone. There was probably someone out front with the wrong apartment number. Patrick was confident she’d correct her mistake if he allowed her a moment or two of futility. He leaned back in the tub, letting the hot water relax his muscles one by one. He sighed happily, suffused with the freedom and joy inherent to knowing he would soon be dead.

The razor had barely kissed his pale skin, his excited heart thundering in his ears, when the pounding began at his door.

Damned inconsiderate, it was. How was Patrick supposed to concentrate on his suicide with someone at his door, banging and shouting? It probably wasn’t even for him, Patrick thought with a scowl. No one _ever_ visited him.

Mood declining sharply, Patrick sucked the single drop of blood he’d raised off his wrist and lifted himself from the tub. He toweled off and put on his robe, yelling out “I’m coming!” and feeling quite cross.

 

 

 

**TURN TO CHAPTER 31 AND CONTINUE READING.**


	28. Chapter 28

Call it masochism. Call it weakness of character. Call it pathetic, deluded, sad—call it anything you damn well wanted, thought Patrick, but _he_ was calling Pete.

Patrick knew from experience that the more rings he had to fidget through, the larger his doubt would loom, and the stronger the compulsion to hang up and play it off as a pocket dial grew. This happened embarrassingly often. Pete was under the impression that Patrick had an especially talkative ass, and had coached him through the process of locking his cell phone before sitting on it on several occasions.

Today, though, luck was with him. And not luck in the usual “thank-god-Pete-thinks-I’m-so-stupid-that-my-lame-excuse-seems-plausible” way, either; this morning’s luck instead caught Pete’s attention halfway through the second ring, even as Patrick’s resolve began to trickle away.

“Lunchbox!” Pete answered enthusiastically. Patrick remembered fondly the days when no one had any idea who was calling them and he could call just to hear Pete breathe and grow annoyed with his phone stalker. They’d been so much closer then.

Realization of his own extreme creepiness spurred Patrick’s response. “Afternoon, Wentz,” he tossed back airily, though it was not yet 10. It was the breeziest thing he could think to say, and he was painfully aware of not sounding like—or, in fact, being—a stalker.

“How are you? What’s going on?” Pete effused cheerfully, and Patrick wondered why he’d been so hesitant to call. Their fight faded in his memory and they chattered happily, quite firmly not acknowledging any of the ill that had passed between them. That was, Patrick supposed, their way; separate, calm down, and forget. It was best; no issues were resolved and wounds had a tendency to fester, but it prevented wayward truths from being spoken and kept their friendship intact. This was the same split-second logic that was behind Patrick’s abandonment at Chessie’s and his own behavior at their by-now notorious brunch. It worked _now_ , though, and they were both too mixed-up to worry or care how it would hold up later.

Pete sounded as listless as Patrick felt, as if their blow-out had shaken him too, and it was with gratitude Pete accepted Patrick’s causal suggestion to ‘maybe hang out sometime, or something’.

“Oh god yes!” Pete met it, not dicking around with nonchalance. He sounded excited as hell. “Stop me if this is stupid, but I really miss hanging out with you. Being on tour spoils me, you know? My best friends around me 24/7. I start to depend on having you at my mercy all hours of the day.” 

Oblivious to the chilling accuracy of his statement, Pete bubbled on happily. “So is today good for you? Because I’m not sure I can wait. To be completely honest all this domestic bliss is making me a little crazy.” Patrick was silent, not sure what to do with this weird power he had over Pete, and his friend moaned impatiently, “Patrick, you’re killing me.”

“All right, yeah,” Patrick said, trying to keep the pleasure from his voice as he did so. “I’ll have to move some things around, but I might be able to—”

“You’re a goddamn hero!” Pete cried delightedly, bringing Patrick’s bullshitting to an abrupt end. “Should I head over? Or did you want to hang out here, see Bronxie? You won’t believe how big he’s gotten.”

It came like a punch in the gut, the forcible reminder that Pete had a life of his own—a wife, a child, a whole world that Patrick had no business invading. He wondered what was worse—feeling like an intruder in Pete’s home, the family he had longed to destroy since its inception, or feeling like a thief of his best friend’s time as they hung around his own empty apartment.

 

 

 

**IF THEY HANG OUT AT PETE’S…**  
…turn to chapter 35 and continue reading.

**IF THEY HANG OUT AT PATRICK’S…**  
…turn to chapter 33 and continue reading.


	29. Chapter 29

The thing was—the real honest truth of it was—that Patrick had nothing to wear. He was all for the jog-tub-death plan, he really was—feeling both ambitious _and_ brave—but he didn’t own anything remotely suitable for jogging in. And, well, if that wasn’t a clear sign from god, he didn’t know what was. It was certainly clearer than a flaming bush—because seriously, God? A bush on fire could mean _anything_. His wardrobe deficiency, though, was a clear indication: fate was not on board with the jogging.

He had plenty of t-shirts, of course, and an abundance of entirely functional hoodies. But he didn’t have pants. In fact, the best option he even had was a pair of violently orange gym shorts that he’d had since high school. They’d fit then, which meant they’d be tight to bursting now.

There was no way in _hell_ he was putting those on. He wasn’t sure why he even owned them. It wasn’t like he was in a hurry to reminisce about PE or the offensively bright school colors they’d had to wear. Maybe a more practical activity for the morning was going through his belongings and destroying the weird and embarrassing ones, assuming that his mother would be sorting through them all in a few days’ time. It would be hard enough for her without finding any gay skin magazines under his mattress or the large collection of erotica _about himself_ he had humiliatingly saved to his hard drive. It wasn’t like he was a big disgusting pervert or anything—it was just that, dead, he wouldn’t be able to defend himself. People would find the folder marked Peterick and judge him, and he wouldn’t be able to get a word in.

Really, Patrick had nothing against jogging. It just seemed like, it being his last morning on earth and everything, he had better things to do.

Patrick changed the password on his computer from _Dumbledore_ to _goodbyecruelworld17_ , figuring that at the very least it was unlikely his mother would guess it. It would take a certain depth of heartlessness and ingenuity to make a guess like that, and he didn’t really know anyone capable of that.

He took a few choice items out to the dumpster personally, including a few copies of Play Girl, the orange gym shorts, and the obviously never-opened copy of Great Expectations he’d been using as a doorstop. He found that, if it wasn’t dog-eared with multiple breaks in its spine, it was just embarrassing to own a classic. Well, it was all right in life; but when people were going through your things and divvying them up, it seemed kind of futile and intimate. Like ‘so Patrick thought he had nothing left to live for, did he? Well look at this! I just found Dickens’ greatest work and it’s _not even cracked_! Guess now we know what kind of guy Patrick Stump _really_ was’. He just felt it would reflect poorly on him. Luckily, it was the only piece of classic literature he owned, so the witch-hunt was short-lived. All of his Harry Potters books were tattered and beaten, and so were the Star Wars novelizations. He thought about throwing those out, on principle, but didn’t want to have to take two trips.

He then scrubbed his toilet and sink thoroughly with bleach. Just covering his bases.

These minor custodial details taken care of, Patrick decided it was time to get on with things. He was starting to feel anxious and like he should call Pete. He should call Pete and confess so that the knowledge wouldn’t weigh on his soul in death as it had in life. Let Pete bear the burden for the next few decades, he’d had enough.

Patrick knew that this was in no way fair, but he felt it nonetheless. Even as he ran his last bath, he began to feel shaky and sick and think things like maybe he didn’t want to die, not really; not _forever_ , anyway.

He sat on the edge of the tub and whimpered.

Thinking: surely no one would fault him for not killing himself?

Thinking: surely he couldn’t stand to fail at this, too.

So what would it be? Would he turn his back on this, like everything else? Would he resign himself to living, alone and in love with a great dark gash across his library record, equipped with morbid statistics and forced to live, forever, with this moment, this memory? Some days he would cringe in shame and think, _what a fool I was_ ; and other days, _what a coward_.

The point of no return wasn’t a physical one, as the books had made him suspect, an awful moment of regret between the act and its consequence, the reason people called 911 on themselves in a flash of terror and longing just before they sunk into either oblivion or the living hell of survival. It was only having made up your mind to do a thing, and living with yourself once you’d changed it.

A coward and a fool, Patrick took a deep breath and decided to live. He felt no relief; shame and immediate regret worked over him in waves. He was disappointed in himself. He wasn’t brave enough to live (he thought bitterly of Pete), and yet neither was he brave enough to die.

This thought was depressing enough to turn him right back to the drawing board, but the buzzer saved him. He pulled on a robe, cast one wistful look at the bathtub, and headed off to buzz whoever-it-was in.

 

 

**TURN TO CHAPTER 31 AND CONTINUE READING.**


	30. Chapter 30

The downside to going home with the bartender, Patrick decided as Saul fixed their drinks, is that being fought over all night and ultimately choosing the most sober guy in the room was that it put you at a serious tactical disadvantage. Patrick had been receiving—and downing—free drinks all night. He had drunk up all his charm and wit (and, he feared, much of his stamina) and now had no hope of wooing Saul. No, Patrick had accepted that he might just have to drug him. Never mind that the pink-cheeked bartender had brought him back to his apartment and, in doing so, expressed willingness to sleep with his drunk ass; Patrick was already preparing himself for the eventuality of going to prison for date rape.

Saul handed Patrick his umpteenth drink, a wicked look upon his face. “You’ve been making me drinks all night,” Patrick scolded him. “I’ll have to make the next one.” His plan was to fix Saul a nice stout gin and gin. Tonic was off the table; there was too much ground for Saul to cover to fuck around with mixers.

“Well, I’m off the clock,” Saul said with a grin. “So you don’t have to tip.”

Patrick made a show of wincing. “Wait, I was supposed to tip?”

The night took on a silly, weirdly intimate quality, the kind of intimacy that came from excessive laughter, the elated little high that made you feel as if, now that this person knew what made you laugh, they’d seen your soul. When giggling turned to kissing turned to more, it felt natural and right, suffused with Patrick’s drunken conviction that he and Saul had shared something deeply personal.

This was not how Patrick felt in the morning.

How Patrick felt in the morning was as if he had been hit by a train.

He was tired and sore from the apparently gymnastic sex he only barely remembered. He was nauseous and half-blind of headache from the entire wet bar he must have drunk.

He also felt deeply unsettled, as if something terrible had happened, as if he had forgotten…

His phone. He’d forgotten—or rather, deliberately left—his phone. Patrick squirmed out of the bed where Saul still lay, snoring gently and quite pretty with the sun falling on his peaceful face. He found his pants and patted the pockets down in vain. He remembered, dimly, deciding the night before to remove it, and therefore the temptation of drunk-dialing Pete, from his person. That meant it was—

Patrick could picture it perfectly. It was on his bedside table, green charging light flickering cheerfully, boasting zero new messages and zero missed calls. It was unnerving to have spent the whole night without it, yes, but it wasn’t like he’d missed out on anything but the nervous privilege of checking it every 30 seconds. He could relax.

Patrick glanced at Saul’s sleeping figure before leaving, trying to convince himself to get back into bed and enjoy a nice, normal morning, complete with awkward small talk and lie-in. Maybe he and Saul could even make something of this. He remembered laughing an awful lot.

But no. His stomach lurched and he had two choices: get home and lay down with a ginger ale and some saltines, or vomit everywhere. He left a tall glass of water with a ‘good morning’ note balanced atop it on Saul’s bedside table, figuring he’d need it if Patrick’s throbbing head was any indication, but for some reason stopped himself from leaving his phone number. He wondered what he would have done had his life been different—that is, Pete-free. Certainly it wouldn’t hurt anyone to just leave the damn thing, give Saul an option—it was as far from commitment as a handshake was from tantric sex, but Patrick found again that he simply could not do it. He was incapable of forming the digits. He put the pen to the paper and nothing happened. His hand would not move.

Patrick’s stomach gave another impatient lurch and he gave it up. He left the note as it was and crept from the apartment, a little confused but not unduly concerned. It seemed that his popularity at the bar last night had done something for his ego after all. The sex, too, was likely a factor. He no longer felt that desperate nagging in his gut, the urgency and terror of knowing he’d be alone forever. After all, there had been a kind of Patrick Stump bidding war last night—two different men who both found him attractive enough to vie for his attentions. Two! If he could find two men in one night, and ones as attractive as Saul and What’s-His-Face—Jake, maybe? Head was still fuzzy—then he could find someone else, no problem. His options weren’t simply fill-in-the-bubble ones; it wasn’t

A) Pete Wentz  
B) Alone forever.

Chicago—hell, the whole world—was full of okay-looking guys who were not only willing to sleep with him, but maybe spend their lives with him as well. And he was young yet—for the first time in a long time, Patrick felt (and truly believed) that there was no reason for him to worry.

 

 

**TURN TO PAGE CHAPTER 34 AND CONTINUE READING.**


	31. Chapter 31

Patrick adjusted the folds of his robe, making sure he was well covered, and opened the door a suspicious crack.

There stood Pete, dripping wet and breathing hard, looking beautiful, looking desperate.

There were many things Patrick could say, a thousand things he could ask, and at least twelve different courses of action branching out from this moment.

He didn’t do any of them. He didn’t move the door or himself in any direction. He didn’t ask any of the questions or utter any of the phrases screaming in his brain. He didn’t even say hello.

Instead, Patrick Stump, conversational wizard, said, “Is it raining?”

Pete looked at him blankly for a moment, as if unable to comprehend what the weather had to do with anything. At length, he said, “Yes,” voice steady.

Patrick was unable to keep himself from blathering on. Words exploded out of his mouth without asking his permission. He realized that he was afraid, deeply afraid. He didn’t know why, or of what, but something deep in him struggled to life, and it didn’t want to let Pete speak—hearing Pete speak would ruin everything.

“When I went out earlier,” he heard himself say quickly, loudly, “it wasn’t raining. So it’s interesting that it’s raining now. When it wasn’t this morning. So, um, I’ve actually run a bath I’ve got to get into, so thanks for stopping by. We’ll catch up later, yeah?” And he moved to push the door shut, heart thundering in his ears, hands quaking.

Pete was too quick. A fatalistic gleam in his eyes, he threw his foot into the gap. Low and even, he said, “Patrick.”

The world ended. Pete’s voice reverberated deep within Patrick, touching long-neglected pieces of him, leaving a burning stir of warmth wherever it went. Someone whimpered and Patrick hoped it wasn’t him; he stumbled back as Pete put his weight on the door, pushing it open. The quiet creak of the hinges was the only sound. The dark fire in Pete’s eyes crackled over Patrick’s skin, threatening to devour him, and he found it hard to draw breath.

Pete now stood in Patrick’s kitchen, face expressionless except for the heat in his eyes, and it was impossible to know what was coming. His mouth was a hard line and he looked desperate. Patrick was terrified, elated, alive; Pete looked into him and through him and saw everything and nothing mattered, the world wasn’t there, so long as Pete kept looking at him like this.

“Patrick,” Pete said again in that same throaty, dangerous way. Goosebumps erupted all across his skin.

“Um, hi,” Patrick squeaked, voice cracking. He couldn’t breathe. He was dizzy. “About my bath…”

“I don’t know what you did to me,” Pete interrupted, sounding a little breathless himself, looking at Patrick as if he was lunch. “I don’t know what happened. But I can’t stop thinking about you, Patrick. I can’t—” and Pete looked a little crazed, wet and wild with circles under his eyes—“I can’t get you out of my head,” he finished fiercely.

Patrick wondered if he was meant to apologize. He didn’t _feel_ sorry. He felt vindicated. Pete hadn’t been sleeping? Pete had taken to doing crazy, irrational things? Pete had been fixating on his male bandmate and didn’t know why?

About. Fucking. Time.

“You didn’t call,” Pete went on, eyes still soldered to Patrick’s. “You always call when we get home.”

“I was mad at you,” Patrick said quietly. He had been. He had been angry, he’d been confused, and then he’d just been lonely and desperate and sad. He’d reached the point at which he normally broke down and called; and he’d decided to investigate suicide instead. Patrick felt suddenly ashamed of himself. What would have happened to Pete, he wondered for the first time? If he’d killed himself. What would that have _done_ to Pete?

Patrick felt selfish and he didn’t like that. “I was mad at you,” he repeated, this time with more conviction.

“No,” Pete said, shaking his head and stepping closer to Patrick, who couldn’t back up without climbing onto the table. “No, I don’t think that’s it.” He stepped closer and closer until there was less than a foot between them. Pete stared into Patrick’s eyes and breathed, “I think you’re in love with me.”

Patrick opened his mouth and closed it again. His head spun and his heart throbbed. There was a desert in his mouth and the world was whirling and he didn’t know if he should argue or agree.

“Am I right?” Pete whispered, lips only inches away. Patrick was light-headed from looking at his eyes. He wanted to look at Pete’s lips, but from this distance it would have given him away. Inside he was screaming, and his body would answer for him if he didn’t act soon. The bathrobe wouldn’t conceal his arousal for long.

“Patrick,” Pete said one more time, almost too quietly to be heard, “I need to know if you’re in love with me.”

“I—” Patrick swallowed hard, paralyzed and trembling in Pete’s gaze. “Yes,” he breathed at last, feeling as if he’d faint.

Pete’s hands rose to cup his face, a thumb on each cheek, fingers curling into Patrick’s hair or pressing the sensitive skin behind his ears. “Thank god,” Pete murmured, taking one last desperate look into Patrick’s eyes before closing the distance between them and fusing their mouths together at last.

It wasn’t for an hour or so that they spoke again. They laid spent and breathless on Patrick’s bed, sheets rumpled and sweaty around them. Pete’s hand found Patrick’s where it lay on the mattress. Patrick’s eyes opened as Pete’s fingers laced through his own. He stole a glance to where Pete lay on his back, smiling at the ceiling. Pete squeezed Patrick’s hand, sighing happily. Patrick let his eyes fall closed again as Pete said for the first time, “I love you back.”

 

 

 

 

 

**_the end_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good job reaching a sweet ending! You have made good choices, my friend.


	32. Chapter 32

Patrick waved goodbye to the cute bartender, letting P— _Jamie_ , damn it, his name was _Jamie_ —pull him by the hand out the door. As soon as they hit the cold, dark air of the street, Jamie’s body was pressed to his own, lips and tongues mashed together. Patrick kissed and groped the lithe young man enthusiastically, not bothered by the catcalls and jeers of the smokers huddled by the door. Patrick loved the smokers of Chicago, he decided with full drunken conviction. They were a stubborn, angry people, bitter and shat upon by the climate and the government alike, pushed into the streets by intolerant laws; they were dedicated, really committed, to their tar-inhaling cause. Patrick loved that about them: the sheer unstoppable doggedness of their campaign, come sleet or snow or arctic wind, come law or tax or outright ban, you would still find them, huddled in clusters outside of bars and high rises, slumped back in their cars destroying their upholstery forever with the smoke they lived on. They always seemed to have the most fun at bars and parties, Patrick reflected, a big coagulate group of strangers bonded by their slavish habit; they were beautiful and winsome and young here in the night, for all that they looked perpetually stressed and haggard when he saw them in the daylight. They laughed the loudest and stayed the longest, drank the most and loved the hardest. Patrick was feeling almost wistful now. If the band broke up and there was no need to ever sing again, he vowed to join their ranks, their organization. He knew he’d be welcomed open-armed. He wondered if they had membership cards. He’d have to free up a space in his wallet.

When Jamie detached from Patrick’s face, he made a little bow to the smokers he felt so connected to. There was a smattering of applause and he called out encouragingly, “Keep fighting the good fight!” before Jamie, giggling, caught his hand again and pulled him into a taxi.

Patrick did not usually take taxis. These days, he had the money for them, but didn’t care for the small talk; he preferred the jostle and anonymity of the el. You didn’t have to talk to _anyone_ on the el, no matter how close to you they sat. Hell, you could get on the el and pee on yourself—he’d seen a homeless guy do it once—and no one would say a word! That was the kind of flexibility Patrick preferred in a transit authority. Cabs were wily, unpredictable; if the driver smelled strongly, you couldn’t pretend not to know where it was coming from. If the driver was angry, all you could do was buckle your seatbelt and pray to the gods you’d survive. If the awkward silence dragged on too long, Patrick began to feel racist and full of himself, as if he fancied himself a king and the cabbie his slave, which he did not. All in all, it was an unpleasant atmosphere for Patrick Stump.

However, that said, the taxi dropped them directly in front of his apartment building, and it was actually quite a hike from the nearest el station. As he had forfeited his ability to walk straight a few hours prior, he was grateful for that much.

Patrick was feeling weirdly expansive as he led Jamie into his apartment. “I love this city,” he said with a sigh, reflecting on her greatness as he dropped onto the couch. A giggling Jamie was dragged down with him, and Patrick kissed him hard on the mouth to shut him up. The giggle was getting annoying.

Jamie moaned in an ingenuous way, and Patrick couldn’t help but feel he was pretending. He stopped kissing the man abruptly. He looked less like Pete than Patrick had initially thought—the light was better here, and his sobriety enhanced by the decline in his mood. The other man’s nose was narrow and pointed, his eyes small and dark with none of the greenish shine buried in Pete’s. Really, Patrick—the same lips, dark hair and tight jeans and inexpertly applied eyeliner, and _that_ evinced Pete to him? Pete, his supposed _soulmate_? He felt ashamed, shallow, horny. Any interest he’d had in Jamie evaporated. It had never been about Jamie, he realized resignedly. He was stupid to think that anything in his life, _ever_ , was about anything but Pete. This was his way of getting over Pete? By bringing home a look-alike? _Jesus, Patrick_ , he scolded himself. _This is pathetic_.

He stood up suddenly, kind of shoving Jamie off of him in a way he hoped was subtle. “Well, it’s been a long night,” he said awkwardly, well aware that it would be almost impossible to get rid of the man now that he’d brought him home.

Jamie, now peering unabashedly into the darkened doorways off Patrick’s living room, hardly seemed to hear him. “Is that a drum set in there?” Jamie cried, squinting into the second bedroom Patrick’s kit presided over.

“Yeah, but—” was all Patrick got out before Jamie disappeared into the room. Patrick weaved after him, groping blindly for the light switch, not thinking anything beyond the fact that a drunk hipster kid was the last person he wanted flailing around in the dark near his toys. Something could get _hurt_.

“You can’t play them at night,” he finished weakly as light flooded the room, realizing belatedly what he’d done. It wasn’t just Jamie and the kit he’d unwittingly illuminated; it was the bank of guitars hung by their necks on the wall, the stack of amps and the jumble of cords, the keyboard in the corner and the heaps of scribbled-on sheet music and records; it was the framed gold copies of From Under the Cork Tree—double platinum—and Infinity on High upon the wall and, by the door, a framed photo of the four of them, grinning like thieves, Pete’s arm slung around his own shoulder. It had been taken years ago, after their first show. They were all young and innocent and beautiful, and thought they would live forever; you could see it in their eyes, their elated smiles. The touch of Pete’s arm hadn’t made him shiver, then; he had not yet dreamed of life beyond a perpetually flooded basement apartment he could almost, but not quite, afford. They had been fresh and new and hardly known each other, and—Patrick’s heart stung—Pete had never yet tried to die, for all he may already have wished to.

All this and more he’d shed light upon, realizing much too late all he’d shown Jamie, realizing much too late what damage he’d done.

Jamie’s eyes were wide, jaw slack, as he gaped around the room and at Patrick. “Holy shit,” he said stupidly. “Are you, like, in a band or something?”

Patrick only just suppressed a groan. Great—he was smart, too. He wondered why this had ever seemed like a good idea. He should have just killed himself. Would’ve been far less painful. Suicide was incredibly attractive as a life plan, particularly when one was standing within a 5-foot radius of Jamie, Boy Genius.

“Or something,” Patrick said crisply, hoping against hope that he could pass himself off as a creepily dedicated fan. But comprehension was dawning on Jamie’s vapid face; bells had been rung and Patrick could do nothing to silence them.

“Oh my god,” Jamie said in reverence and mounting excitement as he read the embossed plaque Infinity on High was displayed on. “Fall Out Boy?” he asked, eyes falling to Patrick once more. He was star struck. “You’re one of the guys from _Fall Out Boy_?”

Patrick, blushing now, stared at a point behind Jamie’s head. “Uh, yeah,” he confessed.

“Which one?” Jamie asked wonderingly, insultingly.

Irritation now palpable, Patrick gritted his teeth and extended his hand for a shake. “Patrick Stump. Lead vocals and rhythm guitar. Nice to meet you.”

Jamie, who apparently all humor was lost on, shook Patrick’s hand, nodding dazedly. “Wow. It’s, like, a real honor. I mean, you’re like _famous_ and shit. I mean—and no offense—I don’t really listen to you guys, but wow.” A thought visibly occurred to Jamie, the little whore, and Patrick wanted to kill him. “So, um, were you like looking for a serious commitment, or is this a one-time thing? Because I don’t like want to show up in any gossip magazines unless it’s, um, worth it, you know? But if you wanted I’d be cool with, like, dating, because I’ve always thought I was kind of _born_ for your lifestyle. Like I’d handle fame really well, I think.”

And this, Patrick cursed himself, is why you _never_ go to a bar and take an idiot home.

 

Patrick woke on his own couch, to which Jamie had sequestered him following the revelation that his semi-famous almost-conquest was not interested in a long-term relationship. (With _him_ , at least, Patrick had amended silently.) Thankfully, Jamie’s indignation over this had removed any sexual obligation—never mind that his intent _before_ his discovery of Patrick’s social status had been exactly that. Patrick was aware that, pudgy and lovable, while he was the kind of person an attractive young man with poor judgment might take home for a night of mindless sex, he was not quite cute or charming enough to strike up a serious relationship with. Someone closer to his own age and less concerned with appearances, maybe—and Patrick thought of the bartender Saul with a pang—but not a floozy like Jamie. (Not that he was complaining.)

The peculiar turn of events that led to him on the couch, however, was less obvious to Patrick. Through some perversion of logic, Patrick’s apparently brutal offense—“I’m not looking for anything serious right now”—had not made Jamie leave the apartment as a normal person might have. Instead, he had run crying into Patrick’s bedroom. When, after waiting near 20 minutes for Jamie to emerge, Patrick had chanced a knock, Jamie had informed him through the door that he had never been more hurt and Patrick could just forget about sharing the bed.

“I’m sorry, what?” had been surprised out of Patrick’s mouth.

“I said you’re SLEEPING ON THE COUCH!” Jamie had shrieked. Now, Patrick had received a few nighttime noise complaints, and he knew that another would cost him his apartment. He’d lived there since their first album had been picked up by Island. Long before he’d even imagined their wild success, he’d upgraded to this nice two bedroom with a decent view and an at-the-time exorbitant rent, and he hadn’t moved since. All the other guys had houses, but not Patrick. He didn’t want a lawn and a garage in the suburbs. He wanted to be here, in the thick of things, in the city he felt so at home in. Although he could afford better now, he liked where and how he lived. Besides that, his landlady Ivona was really quite sweet under her terrifying exterior, and moving was a pain in the ass.

Long story short, if Jamie was going to get shrieky, then Patrick was going to leave him the hell alone and hope he didn’t steal anything while Patrick slept.

And that was that.

Now, groggy and stiff, Patrick saw that his door remained shut. It was possible that Jamie had left and shut it behind him, but it looked rather foreboding. He staggered across the room to try the handle. Emanating from inside were soft little snores. Great. Couldn’t have had the sense to slip out while Patrick was sleeping. Had to stay the whole freaking night.

Patrick tried the knob anyway. It rattled but didn’t turn. And then he heard a subtle, muted beep—the sound of a phone message left unattended, gently reminding him that it was there. He patted down his pockets futilely. He already knew where the phone was. It was locked in the bedroom with Jamie.

 

 

 

**TURN TO CHAPTER 36 AND CONTINUE READING.**


	33. Chapter 33

That evening found Pete settled on Patrick’s couch, enmeshed in uncomfortable silence. The fight they’d had loomed larger now, and words were hard to come by. There’d been talk about ordering a pizza, but after their initial disagreement about where to order from it had been revealed that both had already eaten.

As Patrick saw it, there were only a handful of activities they could engage in that didn’t involve speaking to one another. They could continue to sit in silence, for example, until they became so overly aware of it that neither would dare break it and they’d never speak to one another again. There was always sex, but it wasn’t as if suggesting _that_ would go a long way to break the awkward tension; Patrick figured that left them with option C, watching a movie, the one activity two people could engage in that actually encouraged and required total silence and no eye contact.

Of course, the mere act of suggesting a movie could lead to a new fit of indecision. Patrick owned several hundred DVDs. Being single and lonely left a lot of time for movie watching; no matter how full he planned his days, there were always nights, those long stretches of blackness and solitude. It seemed he would inevitably end up here, on this couch, unable to sleep, surrounded by oblivion.

Patrick decided to simplify the decision-making process. He lifted a Best Buy bag from his coffee table and pulled his two newest movie purchases out of it.

 

 

“ _Zombieland_ or _Gone With the Wind_?” he asked without preamble, holding the respective films aloft.

 

 

**IT’S UP TO YOU!**

**IF THEY WATCH _ZOMBIELAND_ …**  
…turn to chapter 40 and continue reading.

**IF THEY WATCH _GONE WITH THE WIND_ …**  
…turn to chapter 37 and continue reading.


	34. Chapter 34

Patrick was in a fine mood. It had been a wonderful night, exactly what he needed, and he was feeling unprecedentedly complete. Things were, he felt, right in the world. He felt this so strongly that he began to whistle as he bustled around his apartment. By the time he made it into the shower, he was singing at the top of his lungs, much to the delight, he was sure, of his neighbors.

Clean and sated and feeling well and truly in control of himself and his life, it was a particularly ebullient Patrick that checked his phone, where it remained discarded on the bedroom floor, still plugged in, forgotten the night before. Resilient, he felt nothing but pleasure and charm when he saw he’d missed a call, and his heart didn’t even shudder or skip when he saw that it was from Andy. He quite cheerfully dialed his voicemail, still humming, and it was like this—smiling, jovial, and at peace—that God smiled down on him and granted him his greatest wish.

It would have been outright panic had the Patrick of yesterday listened to Andy’s voicemail—band meeting at Joe’s beginning exactly twenty minutes ago. He would have been inconsolable over all the dark possibilities that such a meeting contained, and even more flustered by his own intrinsic lateness. Today, though, Patrick’s disposition was truly sunny. He knew in his heart what the meeting was—a discussion of the band’s future. This did not concern him overmuch. They all wanted the same things and had the same goals. Patrick was overcome with utter confidence that everything would end well. Pete would probably raise some hysterical points about how he was no good for the band, and they would together soothe him that he _was_ the band and he was being ridiculous if he thought they’d let him quit. Then there’d be talk about writing songs for a new album versus taking some time off and not worrying about it yet. Pete would want to let the music come to them naturally, as he always did, and Patrick was all right with that. He was feeling some pretty decent music this morning. He couldn’t wait to write it down.

No, the only concern of this wiser, happier Patrick was whether or not the guys would lynch him for being late. Of course, there was an easy solution—one that would placate even the most foul and irritable and Fing-Fang-Foom-ish of beasts—one that would surely be sufficient to placate his bandmates.

He could bring coffee.

 

 

 

**IF PATRICK…**

**BRINGS COFFEE AND ARRIVES EVEN LATER…**  
…turn to chapter 39 and continue reading.

**FORGOES THE COFFEE, RISKS THEIR WRATH, AND ARRIVES JUST A LITTLE BIT CLOSER TO ON TIME…**  
…turn to chapter 41 and continue.


	35. Chapter 35

The walk from the train station to Pete’s latest suburban palace wasn’t a long one. Patrick hummed tunelessly as he cut through a field of Little League baseball diamonds and residential back yards. It was all too idyllic, too perfect. Even Pete’s ridiculous cookie-cutter mini-mansion was a stupid place to live, Patrick reflected—he could afford a nicer place with a bigger yard and fewer, more discreet neighbors. His family certainly wasn’t large enough to warrant his brand-new 2010 SUV. But that, Patrick supposed, was the magic and madness of his best friend. Pete did not do things by half. If he was going to be a father, he was going to live in the thick of suburbia and drive a gas-guzzling whale and have barbecues in his back yard and baseball fields beyond, and there would be a sandbox and a swingset and a stock portfolio, a Kiss the Cook apron for Pete and a sundress for Ashlee and a little sister for Bronx in the works before long.

It was no wonder Pete had talked about quitting, Patrick thought. Being a rock star hardly fit into the J. Crew catalog picture. Eyeliner and tattoos would be replaced (or at least covered) with V-neck sweaters and football practice, a dependable wristwatch and designer suits; the bass would be replaced with a business degree. The thought gave him chills. It sounded like Pete—felt like something he would do, reckless and burning, before collapsing in a black exhaustion, slowing down, finding himself shaking and alone.  
Patrick sighed. No, not alone. Because every time Pete had crashed, Patrick had been there with him. Pete’s black moods were bleak, frightening, sometimes violent—but they were the times when he needed Patrick most, whether he knew it or not. It was another tension laid upon a relationship already strained, but Patrick dared not resent it.

It was these melancholy thoughts that carried him to the back gate of Pete’s house. Feeling ambitious, he hopped it with some difficulty and strode up to the patio door, patting Hemingway’s head as he passed. He hesitated, poised to knock. Ashlee hated it when he came up to the back instead of using the front door like a normal person with a car would. Personally, Patrick liked the way it felt, intimate and carefree, the way he’d felt during summer vacation when he was 10, terrorizing not only his own home but all of his neighborhood cronies’ as well. He reflected for the first time that it was Ashlee’s house—he was not a child, and it ill suited him to behave as one. He was a guest here, an intruder among Pete’s family; he did not belong. He lowered his knocking hand and was about to creep off the porch and around the front when a sound froze him. It was a brutal scream, a long and high-pitched string of loud and angry words. A lower shout, Pete’s, answered. On top of the yelling, Patrick heard the rising wail of terror of a child—Bronx.

His insides shriveled and he backed off the porch with alarming speed. He wanted to go home, wanted to be anywhere but here. This was worse than listening to his own parents. Poor kid—no wonder Bronx was screaming. He felt a little like screaming himself. Why, oh why, didn’t he have a car like a normal person? Then he could get into it, and drive away. Why must his escape be incumbent on a damnable train schedule? There was an _hour_ before the next express out of dodge (a place he very much wanted to get the hell out of).

It wasn’t exactly warm, and in a typical burst of un-insightfulness he’d failed to wear a jacket, but Patrick resolved himself to waiting out the hour ‘til the next train out of doors nonetheless. Freezing to death—which was unlikely even on the briskest of October days, even in a place as cursedly sadistic of weather as Illinois—was undeniably a better option than ringing the doorbell and entering the house, stiff in the wake of the bloody argument that had so recently shaken its walls.

Patrick had only just decided this when the universe made a clever joke and the sky burst open in freezing, torrential rain.

Well. That was just great. Fate, apparently, had plans for Patrick Stump that very much involved staying right smack in the middle of dodge.

Patrick allowed himself a sigh and a moment of self-pity before accepting that the gods themselves had forced his hand and ringing the bell.

The shouting, barely audible from this side of the house, grew louder until, as the door swung open, it gave way to abrupt, echoing silence far worse than the heated curses preceding it. “Patrick,” Pete said with a strained smile, faking normalcy. “Hey-oh.”

Ashlee arrived in the foyer as Patrick did, the wailing Bronx on her hip, tears streaking both faces. “So what, you make him scream and it’s my problem?” she demanded, voice barely controlled. “You did this, you fix it!” She shoved the still-shrieking child into Pete’s arms, sending a scathing, “ _Hi_ , Patrick,” over her shoulder as she stalked away.

Pete flashed a tight, apologetic grin before he refocused his attention on Bronx, bouncing and soothing him. It worked remarkably well; by the time Pete had led Patrick to the den, the child was babbling happily and asking to play with his blocks as if there weren’t tears still wet on his fat cheeks.

Both men caved to Bronx’s demands, and the three of them were surrounded by Duplos in no time. “Can’t wait ‘til he graduates to proper Legos,” Pete said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

Patrick hesitated, debating the merits of his question before letting it free to cut to the heart of Pete’s carefully constructed act. Finally he could see no reason to hold it back.  
“Are you okay?” he asked quietly, fiddling with a block as Bronx burbled happily between them.

Pete’s face fell so suddenly that Patrick felt his breath burst out of him as if he’d been hit. _Wow_. “Oh. Um. Yeah. Just… I’ve been away for a long time. It’s a little… rough.”

Patrick ached with words unsaid. He wasn’t sure what to do, what a friend would do—talk him through it? Question him, challenge the stagnancy that was making him so unhappy? Or simply be there, as a comfort, as a friend?

 

 

**WHAT DOES PATRICK DO?**

**IF HE QUESTIONS PETE’S UNHAPPINESS…**  
…turn to chapter 38 and continue reading.

**IF HE HOLDS HIS TONGUE AND COMFORTS PETE…**  
…turn to chapter 43 and continue reading.


	36. Chapter 36

Patrick bit his lip and began to pace back and forth in consternation. Every time the beep sounded, he experienced a mad, spasmodic urge to throw himself upon the door repeatedly, until it collapsed. What if it was something important? What it if was Pete? God, he missed Pete. Not just the man he loved—more than that, the lovesick puppy known as Patrick missed his best friend.

Because the idea of tearing down his own bedroom door was becoming altogether too seductive, Patrick elected to leave the apartment. He’d calm down, get some coffee, and plead with the people at his regular Starbucks to let him use the phone. He could call Pete, make sure the message hadn’t been from him and, with luck, by the time he’d finished his coffee cake and made it home, all traces of Jamie would be gone. Patrick didn’t even care anymore if Jamie stole anything; it if got him out of there faster, he was welcome to Patrick’s belongings.

Patrick could no longer fathom why it had seemed like a good idea to bring Jamie home with him, especially when he could now see so clearly that it was one of the stupidest things he’d ever done. He was in love with Pete, and there was nothing to be done for it—no helping it. Bringing Jamie home had been a sad, inadvisable stab at a total personal reform Patrick wasn’t sure he’d ever have the strength for. After all—just look at him. All aflutter because he may have missed a call or a text message that might, possibly, out of the wide array of people he knew and had promised to hang out with and/or contact upon returning from tour, have been from Pete, who was not even speaking to him at the moment and had no reason to contact him whatsoever.

 _Unless it was an emergency_ , the pathetic part of Patrick’s brain whispered. _It could have been an emergency_.

This line of unlogic taking a firm hold, Patrick grew increasingly nervous as he walked (and then, embarrassingly, trotted) to Starbucks. He smelled like a bar and looked like the walk of shame run over by a gravel-toting truck, but he didn’t care—he needed to get to a phone, get to Pete, and his fixation was total. He was gripped by the mounting, unfounded conviction that something was terribly wrong, that Pete needed him, that being apart was the worst thing for them.

He was looking well and truly crazed as he burst into the Starbucks his personally thought of as _his_ , hair wild and awry, face gleaming with sweat, clothes creased and wrinkled, psychotic around the eyes.

“Morning, Patrick,” one of his favorite baristas greeted him, a nervous laugh in her voice. Even after all her years of making his coffee, she was disconcerted by his appearance. The alarmed looks the panhandlers and bums had been shooting him for the duration of his walk began to make more sense. He must look truly awful. “Rough night?”

Patrick rushed to the counter, resisting the urge to clasp her hands in supplication. “I want the usual, giant-sized, and—Melody, you know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t an emergency—can I use the phone?”

The girl looked a little taken aback, maybe at the sheer desperation Patrick wasn’t afraid to suggest. He also, Patrick figured, very much looked like someone who was currently involved in an emergency situation. “Well, yeah, but we’re not supposed to, so just—don’t walk off with it, okay?” She tried another laugh, but Patrick’s face, contorted in anguish, did not change. Melody had to physically pass the handset over the counter to him before his face broke out in a nervous, frightening smile.

Patrick babbled a litany of thanks before creeping into a corner to make his call. Bewildered, Melody shook her head and got to work on his drink. Patrick had worried Pete would not answer a strange number, but he did, the third time Patrick called. By this point he was almost convinced that Pete had died, and the missed message had been his last, desperate, call for help, and Patrick had not been there to save him—

“Hello?” Pete answered, wary of stalkers and telemarketers alike.

“Pete, it’s me,” Patrick gushed in relief. “Are you all right? I mean, is anything wrong?”

“Oh. Um, this isn’t your number,” Pete pointed out helpfully. There was a cold, closed-off quality about his voice, as if he was upset about something. Probably still mad about their fight and the long silence following it.

“Right, yeah. Well, I don’t have my phone right now, but I could hear it beeping and…” Patrick realized how ridiculous he sounded and added in a whisper, “I thought it might have been you.”

“Well, it was,” Pete said. Patrick experienced a brief flash of absolution before Pete eradicated it. “I called last night, and you didn’t call back, and I needed to talk to you so, you know, I decided to head into the city and drop by your place this morning.”

Patrick’s delicate inner works froze over. He felt as if he’d been plunged, heart and soul, into a bucket of ice. “But you’re not there yet,” he said desperately, mind racing. “I mean, are you? I’m not there either. Why don’t you meet me at—”

“Patrick,” Pete interrupted. “I’ve just been.”

Patrick swallowed hard. They had just missed each other, then; by minutes. Minutes—Jamie had gotten up and left in that time, surely? Surely he hadn’t seen any need to linger. And even if he hadn’t—well, he’d slept through the buzzer, then. And if someone else had buzzed Pete in, he’d slept through the knocking too. Of course he had. Of course.

“Oh,” Patrick squeaked. “Okay. So what did you want to talk about?”

“Right now? Right now I want to talk about the half-naked kid who answered your door and asked me for my autograph.”

Oh, god. It was official. Patrick’s life was a joke, it was a sham, it was a facsimile of a sham, and it was over. He should’ve killed himself while he had the chance.

Patrick was distantly aware of his body collapsing into an armchair. Melody shot him an impatient look of concern. His order was up, and she no doubt wanted the phone back before the manager saw him with it. Patrick was too busy dying to care.

“Oh, him?” Patrick croaked weakly, hoping he sounded casual and not like he was going to fling himself into the Chicago River as soon as they got off the phone. “That’s, um, he’s—”

“Why you couldn’t answer my call, am I right?” Pete intervened drily. “You were previously engaged, and couldn’t come to the phone.”

“No, it wasn’t like that,” Patrick floundered. What was Pete thinking? What did Pete think of him? What could Pete possible think after seeing Jamie, fresh from sleep, answering the door as if he owned the place, looking like Pete? “I didn’t—I mean, we didn’t—”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” Pete said in a clipped voice that suggested he’d very much like an explanation. “You can sleep with whoever you feel like.”

“I didn’t _sleep_ with him!” exploded out of Patrick so forcefully that the Starbucks fell silent. Everyone, Melody included, stopped what they were doing and stared. Patrick lowered his voice and repeated, “I didn’t sleep with him.”

Pete sounded exasperated, voice thick with disbelief. Patrick could tell he had said all the wrong things. “I don’t care what you did with him!” Pete cried. “I just wish you’d told me.”  
Patrick bristled at this. Didn’t Pete remember what had _happened_ last time he’d tried to profess his love? He’d been abandoned in a public place. Did he think Patrick _wanted_ him to find out like this? Yeah, Patrick wished he’d told Pete too; he wished it every day. But Pete had made it perfectly clear that this was not an option. And now to turn around and—!

So Patrick took the only course left to defend himself. He backpedaled. “Look, I know you and he share a certain resemblance, but that is hardly indicative of… of anything! All _that_ means is that, um, well, is nothing. It means nothing. I mean, I didn’t even sleep with him, so it’s not like he’s even… like you’re even… Maybe neither one of you is my type!” he burst out in another stare-earning shriek. Melody took a few tentative steps toward him, and reclaiming her phone. Patrick controlled his voice. “You’re making wild assumptions here, Pete. Just because I brought home a guy who looks _slightly_ a lot like you doesn’t mean you get to go around accusing me of being in love with you! Because I most certainly am not!”

There was silence, and Patrick reflected on his victory. It had been a near thing, but in the end he had prevailed. Melody had inched over to him, proffering cinnamon swirl cake and a venti caramel latte. “Trade you,” she whispered bravely, gesturing at the phone.

Patrick glared at her and turned in his chair so his back faced her. Pete had recovered from his stunned silence to say, “Um. I meant you should have told me you liked guys, or that you were seeing someone, or something. Not… uh… so wait. You’re in _love_ with me?”

Clearly Pete had come away from Patrick’s outburst with the exact wrong salient bit. If Patrick had thought he wanted to die before, that was nothing to how he felt now. “I just finished explaining that I absolutely do not, in any way—” Patrick stopped. What was the point of it all? I mean, really? “Oh, god,” he moaned, unable to believe himself. “I—um—kind of. Yes.”

He heard Pete exhale slowly and then say, “Okay. That’s…. Okay. Give the barista the phone back and come talk to me.”

Patrick whipped around in his seat so violently that he nearly plowed Melody over. There, seated at a table by the window, was Pete. He held his phone to his ear with his shoulder and waved. Surely, Patrick thought, this was death.

“How long have you been here?” Patrick managed to rasp into the phone.

“About since I answered your call,” Pete said gently. Patrick found it difficult to look at him, and chose instead to slump down in his seat so that he was at least partially obscured by a display of coffee grounds. “I didn’t realize you were here too until you started shouting, though. To be fair.”

Patrick groaned, a deep hiss of pain and torment that was far easier than forming words.

“Come on,” Pete urged, a smile flickering on his lips. He was being unbearably kind. “Let’s talk, okay?”

Melody, having realized after some confusion what was going on, snatched the phone away from Patrick with a scowl. “You may _never_ ,” she declared forcefully, “use this phone again.”

Patrick barely heard her. Apparently realizing that Patrick was in no state to move, Pete gathered up his coffee and his coat and made his way over to Patrick’s corner even as Melody stomped away with the phone, glowering.

Pete laid his coat over the back of another armchair and crouched by Patrick’s feet, taking the quivering hands in his own. Patrick could not stand to look at Pete in his humiliation, and stared at their joined hands instead. The world had been torn from beneath his feet and he would have been adrift, tumbling, if not for those cool, firm hands on his, anchoring him to a world he was uncertain he wished to stay anchored to.

“Hey,” Pete said quietly, insistently. “Hey.” He squeezed Patrick’s hands. “Look at me, Stump.”

Patrick lifted his chin by inches until his eyes at last drew level with Pete’s, which were dark and wide and kind, flecked with green, soft and beautiful. He almost cried out, just from the beauty in them, just for his desire to sink into them forever and never look away. He felt a wild urge to apologize, as if loving Pete was an inconvenience to them both. And it was, it had been for years—the most wonderful inconvenience—but the way Pete’s eyes fell on him now made him think that he was wrong.

“I didn’t know you loved me, Patrick,” Pete said quietly, staring up at Patrick with sincerity painted on his face. “But listen—I’m glad you do.” Patrick made to look away and Pete caught his chin with a newly freed hand. “Hey!” he said again, agitated by Patrick’s attempt to escape from his blazing eyes. “I’m glad you do because I was coming here… I was coming here to tell you…” Pete broke off and laughed in a humorless way, looking up at the ceiling as tears formed in his eyes. He blinked rapidly, face twisting as he collected himself. Pete took a hard, rattling breath and met Patrick’s eyes again with force. He looked hunted now, intense. “I’m leaving her, Patrick. I didn’t know if you wanted me… if you cared… but I love you. I _love_ you, and I’m leaving Ash, and…” Pete trailed off again, tears on his face now, and rested his forehead on Patrick’s knee.

Patrick didn’t know what to think, feel, say. He was blown away. Pete, who he loved, who loved _him_ , was crying quietly, unobtrusively, on his knee. Jamie was likely still in his home, going through his things, stealing boxers and guitar picks to sell on eBay—calling tabloids and trying to get his picture in them. And Ashlee—did she know? Was she packing up her things and her son and moving out even as Patrick thought it? Or was she cheerful, oblivious, making Bronx lunch, humming to herself and fondly straightening framed family portraits?

This on his mind, Patrick said the wrong thing, as he had done, as he had been doing. “You have a son,” slipped numbly from his lips. A son, a responsibility. To have a child was to acknowledge that you were no longer the most important person in your life; it meant giving up pieces of yourself and your happiness, doing what was necessary to do what was right for the child. Leaving your wife did not fit in with this obligation set.

Pete’s tremors became more pronounced. Wet began to soak the leg of Patrick’s jeans. “I have to… make a choice,” he eked out around his tears. Pete seemed to see the fairness in explaining his position. “I can’t… go on… like this.” Pete looked up now, face wet and shining, eyes brimming with his plea. _Don’t hurt me. Don’t make this harder_. “I can leave the band… stop seeing you and try… try to do this right… or I can see Bronxie on Wednesdays and weekends… get an apartment downtown… and find out what makes me happy.”

This was hard to argue with, particularly when it was everything he’d ever wanted, but Patrick found a way. “Have you spoken to Ashlee about this?” he asked stiffly.  
Pete recoiled, rocking back onto his heels, looking at Patrick in disbelieving horror, as if he’d never seen him before, not really. “Of course I have!” he cried defensively, scrubbing at the tears on his face with a sleeve. “The woman is my _wife_ ; do you think she doesn’t notice when I’m unhappy? Do you think she doesn’t care when she finds me in the bathroom transfixed by her razor, when Bronx is crying next to me and I can’t even hear him?” Some of Pete’s anger seemed to deflate as quickly as it had come. “I—Ash and I have been in counseling for a while. She… would be supportive of a separation. I would still be part of my son’s life.”

“You’re being selfish,” Patrick said without meaning to. He found that he was _angry_ with Pete, with a Pete so willing to cave under the weight of his suffering and abandon his family on a whim. This was not the man, so tragic and strong in the face of endless pain, he had known and loved. Worse yet, a small, muffled part of Patrick wondered whether or not Pete would leave him, too, when it was convenient, when someone else caught his eye.

Pete’s mouth dropped open. He looked like he’d been struck. “How can you say that to me?” he asked, voice low and hot and angry. “How can you look at me and _say_ that? Listen to me, Stump—this is the best way I know to be a father, a person. This way I don’t have to sacrifice or hurt anyone or thing that I love, and both me _and_ Ash have a chance to be happy. If you don’t want to be with me—” and Pete’s voice was climbing in volume, hard and hot as fresh-forged steel—“ _fine_. But don’t you fucking sit there and call _me_ selfish!”

Patrick was oddly proud of Pete and the lashing he’d given him. It seemed well thought-out, and Pete clearly stood by his decision. There were no doubts. That was, Patrick realized, what he’d really wanted to know. He’d wanted proof that Pete was certain he was doing the right thing—because it wasn’t going to be easy. It was important that he was sure, because certainty was the only thing that would lend him the strength to get through what lay ahead.

“You’re right,” Patrick said, elated feeling rising up in him. “I’m sorry.” He smiled, suddenly feeling very sunny, and reached for his coffee.

“Pete?” he said, cup raised halfway to his lips. Pete, fists still clenched, stared bewilderedly at him. “Of course I want to be with you.”

Patrick sipped his cooling latte with particular relish, watching Pete’s face change.

It was delicious.

 

 

 

**_the end_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this is a sweet ending, myself. Now who wants Starbucks?


	37. Chapter 37

“What are you, a woman?” Pete teased, swiping _Gone With the Wind_ out of Patrick’s hand and studying the back with a smirk on his face.

“No,” Patrick protested, sounding like nothing so much as a truculent three-year-old. “But it’s a classic, isn’t it?” Pete gave him a look and Patrick crumbled. “All right, all right, the salesgirl said I’d like it.”

“You have a personal relationship with this salesgirl?” Pete pressed, mocking grin on his face. “Is she familiar with your tastes? Does she, like your mother, inspire such fear that—”

Deigning to disallow Pete to continue, Patrick cut him off. “I’m there a lot, okay?” It was true—Patrick, in his loneliness, frequented a particular Best Buy, Borders, Starbucks, and specialty guitar store. Sometimes he went just to hang out and only bought things so that the people he showed up to hang out with remained unaware of his motivations. The guitar store was an exception; the guys who worked there were _beyond_ cool. Patrick hung out with them all the time and didn’t care if they knew.

Before Pete could continue being difficult, Patrick had wrestled the plastic off the movie. “Since _you’re_ so interested in the story,” he said impudently, “we’re watching it.”

“Instead of _Zombieland_?” Pete whined, but it was no good. Patrick had already put the disc in; their fates were sealed.

Three hours later, Pete was snoring loudly, dead unconscious on the couch. Patrick himself could barely keep his eyes open. It wasn’t that he didn’t _like_ the movie—it was just that the movie was immensely long and immensely boring. None of this, he felt strongly, was Patrick’s own fault. It was all on _Gone With the Wind_ and that damn salesgirl he clearly spent too much time with.

Patrick had, in truth, given up on the movie entirely. He was no longer watching in bullheaded anticipation of Rhett Butler’s infamous snub and the one noteworthy scene of this entire travesty; he was now watching Pete. He was watching Pete’s chest rise and fall, watching Pete’s smooth skin shine in the dim light, watching Pete’s lips and eyelids twitch. He couldn’t tear his eyes away. Pete looked so peaceful, so incredibly beautiful; Patrick’s hands hovered over Pete’s body, aching to touch and to hold, and he heard his own voice on the air, punctuated by Pete’s snores.

“My god, you’re beautiful,” Patrick murmured to Pete’s still form. Tentative but with growing boldness, he brushed aside a lock of Pete’s dark hair where it had fallen to obscure an eye. Pete’s sleeping body tensed under Patrick’s touch, but his sleep and heavy breathing went undisturbed.

“I love you,” Patrick whispered, hoping the words would find Pete in his dreams and help reconcile the soul-deep struggle that, under the patient supervision of lithium, still raged. He meant it in the most reverent and innocent of ways; he meant it with only tenderness and deep affection. For once it was neither a declaration nor an imposition; for once it was not a selfish claim.

Patrick told Pete that he loved him for the first time, and he said it with the best of himself.

If he could do that, he figured, he could do anything.

 

 

 

**_the end_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed it!


	38. Chapter 38

Patrick took a deep, steadying breath. He looked up at Pete, whose glittering eyes were trained on his son. “Maybe… this isn’t the best situation for you,” he broached the topic tentatively. From the look of things, Pete had probably spent the first week or so of his time at home as a hypomanic super-dad; now he was slipping into the inevitable twisting darkness that followed. Patrick was going out on a limb by asking about it; Pete was notorious for his inability to handle criticism. But it was true that someone of his mercurial temperament was not suited to a stay-at-home suburban life; he belonged in the heart of the city, deeply invested in the music and writing that was his only relief. But Patrick wasn’t eloquent enough to say these things he felt out loud; instead, all he could manage was the mildly insulting, “You aren’t really the domestic type, are you?”

Pete looked up at last, slight frown about his full lips, brow creased. “What’s that mean?” he asked, a little petulant.

Patrick reached out for words, blindly stumbling on the truth. “That you don’t seem… happy,” he said at length.

Muted surprise registered on Pete’s face. “Oh,” he said quietly. “I suppose… that’s because I’m not.”

Patrick had not expected frankness. Pete seemed soft and sad, defeated, where he normally would have been defensive. Yes, his friend was prone to violent tempers; but Patrick didn’t often see this dangerously sad version of him. He thought about the first time Pete had attempted suicide, and the way he’d been just beforehand—quiet, sad, withdrawn. This was all too familiar.

His heart broke, just hearing it. “Pete…” he said softly, at a loss.

Pete gave another tired half-smile and looked back at Bronx, who was still building away determinedly. “I think I might be in love with you,” he said matter-of-factly, as if it were an offhand comment about the weather.

Patrick burst out spluttering. Pete looked up at him, raising an eyebrow and looking distantly amused. The warmth of it was dimly echoed in his eyes. “Are you honestly that surprised?” he asked, laughter in his voice.

Patrick opened and closed his mouth several times before he was able to choke out an emphatic “ _Yes_!”.

Pete laughed in his far-off way again, a small and soft sound, nothing like his usual full-bodied laugh. “I thought you knew,” he said, looking up through his bangs with something that could have been mistaken as shyness but Patrick recognized as detached curiosity. “For a while, I even thought you felt the same.” Patrick began to sputter again and a small smile spread slowly across Pete’s lips. “It’s not nice to make fun,” he said, and then with more, albeit forced, animation, “Right, Bronxie?”

Bronx gave his father a wide, wet grin and handed him a Duplo block. Patrick, meanwhile, quietly suffered a massive aneurysm and died.

Or at least, that’s what it felt like. He found himself unable to take his eyes off Pete, even as the other man played with his son, smiling in an almost genuine way and offering architectural suggestions which Bronx duly ignored. “I… but… I…” was all Patrick could manage to say.

When Pete looked up again, he wasn’t smiling anymore. There was a numb, impersonal hunger in his eyes. “But I’m here, doing this, right? So whether you did or didn’t, do or don’t—none of it matters. I am a man without choices.”

Patrick found himself relieved to hear bitterness seeping into Pete’s voice. Anything was better than emptiness. “You have choices,” Patrick said, finding himself more quietly, hopelessly, in love than ever. _Choose me_ , he pleaded silently, selfishly, sparing no thought to the child between them, nor the silently sobbing woman upstairs. All he knew, all he cared about, was that neither of them was doing very well on their own; it only made sense that this time, as they tried to figure out how to be alive, they were together. _I need you to choose me._

Pete looked up at his friend a little dazedly. “Does this,” he asked quietly, “look like a choice to you?”

But Patrick was done speaking. He leaned behind Bronx and seized Pete’s face in his hands. He saw confusion flicker across Pete’s face in the second before he kissed him. It was a short, chaste kiss; Patrick ended it, staring hard into Pete’s dazzled eyes, not letting go. “I love you,” Patrick whispered, and kissed Pete again. “I always have.” Again. “You have a choice. You can choose—” again—“me. Choose me.” Pete let out a soft whimper as he was left wanting for the next kiss. It was not forthcoming; Patrick had released him and now sat breathless and electrified, wrapped in ecstasy and despair, waiting for Pete—as he had been his whole life, waiting for Pete.

Before Patrick fully knew what was happening, he was flat on his back on the floor, pinned by Pete. Pete devoured Patrick with his eyes and Patrick’s body erupted in tingling in expectation of the full, all-holds-barred violence of the kiss to come.

But before their lips could touch, Bronx called out delightedly, “Kackle! Daddy kackle!”

Pete flung himself away from Patrick as if he were made of white-hot steel. Patrick understood immediately, feeling hot, sick shame flood his core. What was he doing? Was he really asking Pete— _Pete_!—to leave his family? Was he really doing it by kissing him while his infant son was _in the room_?

“Yeah, daddy tackle,” Patrick said to Bronx, forcing a smile. Pete had his face buried in his arms and was rocking slightly. Clearly, this one was on Patrick. “Get ‘im, Bronxie,” Patrick urged half-heartedly. Bronx laughed at first, thrilled at the idea of jumping on his father; but when he reached Pete his perilously wobbling run slowed, and he laid a tiny chubby hand on Pete’s arm.

“Daddy?” Bronx cooed, concern clear even on his baby face. “Daddy, iss okay.”

Pete’s hand emerged to pull Bronx into his embrace. Patrick heard the litany in his sobs, then: “Daddy’s so sorry, Bronxie. So sorry.”

Patrick stood up quietly, easing out of the room while Pete cried and rocked his son. It was time for him to go—he didn’t belong here.

 

 

He made it to the front door before she spoke.

“You’re not leaving already?” Ashlee’s voice, hoarse from crying. Patrick turned to see her sitting on the stairs, face puffy, looking her age—young, heart-breakingly young.

“Uh, yeah,” he said, shame writhing within him, wondering if she could tell by looking that he’d kissed her husband, that he loved her husband.

“Did you fight?” she pressed.

“Not really,” Patrick said. “Yeah. I don’t know.”

Ashlee looked at him beseechingly, voice quaking as she whispered words Patrick certainly hadn’t signed on to hear. “My marriage isn’t working, Patrick.”

“…Sorry,” Patrick said at length. He wasn’t sure what she was expecting. It’s not like he was the Wentz family psychiatrist or confidant. He was Pete’s best friend. He couldn’t possibly be an appropriate outlet for Ashlee to vent her marital frustrations at, even if the very word ‘marriage’ from her lips hadn’t curdled his soul.

Ashlee forged on as if he had not spoken, at least clearing up the question of her expectations—no matter what he said or didn’t say, it seemed, there was no stopping this. Even if he ran out the door, her words would keep pouring out her, filling up the air in the room ‘til she suffocated at last. “It’s ruining both of us,” she said wearily. “I can’t… I want to try, but… He’s gone for months. He comes home a stranger, and he’s so busy… he’s never around. Bronx didn’t remember him, can you believe it? When he came home, Bronx didn’t know who he was. This just… it isn’t _fair_ , Patrick!”

Now that was a sentiment he could get on board with. “No, it’s not,” he agreed devoutly, resigning himself to his hellishly awkward fate. He crossed the foyer and trotted up a few stairs, at last settling himself beside her. He put an arm around her shoulders and wondered if it was a mistake, an invasion, but she leaned into the comfort gratefully, resting her head on his shoulder.

“You’ll take care of him, won’t you?” she whispered into the still air. Patrick knew instinctively the words she did not say— _when I’m gone_.

His heart stuck painfully in his throat and made it hard to speak. “Of course,” he said with difficulty.

Ashlee got to her feet, straightening her hair around her face. “He cares for you very much, you know,” she said, and her eyes told Patrick she was not so blind to the truth as she might seem. “More than me, I think.”

“He loves you,” Patrick protested, meaning it. Ashlee smiled sadly, ascending backwards with cautious feet.

“But I’m still no you,” she told him sadly, and the moment was gone. She turned around and called back without bitterness, with only peace, “I’m going home for a few days. You two can manage Bronx, I think. I’ll call when my flight gets in.”

She disappeared into the first doorway in the hall, presumably to pack, and Patrick sat on the stairs for a long time. After a while, he picked himself up and headed back to the den. He would have to face them sometime. After all—he belonged here now.

 

 

 

 

**_the end_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Achievement unlocked: Patrick and Pete live happily ever after.


	39. Chapter 39

Patrick was still whistling as he made his way to his favorite Starbucks. He wasn’t too bothered by rushing; Joe’s downtown condo, which was not his primary residence, was a short walk from here. Joe and Pete had lived there once, before Ashlee, and these days Joe also possessed a very nice house, but for whatever reason he’d held on to the old condo, and they always met up downtown. This, Patrick suspected, was for his convenience. The guys tended to baby him, as if being hung up on unrequited love made him some sort of invalid. Pete, he felt it was appropriate to point out, was the one with an unstable condition. Maybe they should pander to Pete for a while instead. There was nothing _wrong_ with Patrick. He was just pathetic. It wasn’t an affliction.

Still, being that he was entirely dependent on public transportation and didn’t much care for cabs—especially for extended trips—it wasn’t like he was really complaining. There’d been enough upheaval and travel in the last few months; he was perfectly content to stay in his city.

Juggling four scalding hot coffees on a windy day, Patrick realized, was not even the start of his troubles. He realized this almost as soon as he stepped out of Starbucks, cups just barely in hand, and a flashbulb went off in his surprised face. To be fair, though, pre-coffee Patrick always suffered some light cognitive lag, so there was a second or two of sheer bewilderment during which he still thought the coffee juggling would be his biggest challenge to date.

The thing was, members of his band were rarely hassled by the press. Unless Pete was killing himself, texting pictures of his genitals, or maybe-possibly knocking up Ashlee Simpson, they were pretty much invisible to the public eye. Even when Patrick did stupid things like getting arrested in California. The press barely made a peep over that one. If it had been Pete, he thought without resentment, it would have been on the cover of People magazine.

Just for the record, Patrick wanted everyone to know that he was really, really okay with that. He _liked_ being able to get coffee and go to restaurants and generally go out in the world with a minimum of whispering, shrieking, and general inconvenience.

As it was, he was so surprised he almost dropped the coffee that was already perilously close to succumbing to gravity.

“Oh, hello,” Patrick said. He knew what reporters were like, and he’d heard—if never learned firsthand—that, like rabid sharks, one should not engage them. But it would have been rude to just ignore the woman with the notepad and the man with the camera; and he also thought it might make them feel a little uncomfortable if he just blazed on past like they didn’t exist. Anyway, it was really no bother. How much effort did it take to say good morning, really?

Patrick was feeling pretty good about his policy of being kind to everyone until Notepad gave him a reason not to. “Can you confirm or deny rumors that Fall Out Boy has broken up?” she tore in voraciously. Camera helped himself to another photo op, this time of Patrick’s stunned speechlessness.

“Um, well, they’re rumors, aren’t they?” he said lamely, laughing without conviction.

“Is that an official denial?” Notepad pressed. Patrick began to wish he’d just walked away. He’d only just begun to stammer when she interrupted with a fresh question. This one didn’t sting like the last, but it did fill him with a wave of terror. “You spent last night at the apartment of a Saul McKenna, is that correct?”

Patrick still didn’t know what to say. Words leaked out of him weakly, and they weren’t the ideal airtight response one generally tried to use with the press. “What do you mean how do you know that excuse me?” trickled out of his mouth in a steady, continuous line.

Notepad smiled like an alligator might, showing unnaturally white teeth. More than anything, Patrick wanted to ask her if Saul had called her, alerted somebody, betrayed him. He hadn’t even told Saul who he was. The slight issue of Patrick being famous had just never come up. This was often the case. Patrick never went home with the ones that recognized him. Not that he went home with anyone, really, very often. It wasn’t like a habit of his or anything. He was generally too busy being stupidly, madly, blindly in love with Pete.

“Now _that_ is a confirmation,” she said with obvious pleasure, and Patrick realized how glad he was that he wasn’t Pete. These people were awful. Why did it matter where he’d spent the night? How did these people even _know_ where he’d spent the night? Saul’s last name was McKenna? His head whirled. “What is your relationship to Mr. McKenna?”

Patrick was certain that his jaw had dropped open, that he was staring from Notepad to Camera in utter horror. Camera, for his part, was still snapping away. Patrick had yet to see his face. He wasn’t sure what to do about it though. “Relation—?” he said in a strangled voice. “I don’t—I mean, there isn’t—Saul is a friend—” Notepad scribbled down everything he said. This infuriated Patrick. “I’m sorry, is there something especially remarkable about me having friends?” he interrupted his own babbling uncertainty. Notepad’s pen hesitated in its mad dash across the page. “I mean, lots of people have friends, don’t they? Is it really newsworthy that I stayed up all night with a friend? I’m sure that’s a pretty common thing to do.”

Notepad glanced to Camera for reassurance. Patrick couldn’t say what solace she found in the unblinking lens, but she turned back to him with new vigor, pen once again prepared to strike. “There’s a great deal of public speculation about your sexual orientation. In what capacity did you share Mr. McKenna’s home last night?”

“ _So_ not your business!” Patrick squeaked before he could stop himself, certain that his face was flaming. The sudden gleam in Notepad’s eyes and the blinding flash of Camera’s redoubled efforts told him that it wasn’t the right answer to give. “I mean—that is to say—Saul is… listen, I’m in love with someone else, all right?”

This time, he actually did drop the coffee. It splashed searing across his legs, seeping into his shoes with scalding alacrity. Notepad cried out as some of the molten liquid splashed from the sidewalk onto her ankles, leaping back. If Patrick had hoped that his shocked reaction to his own words and subsequent third-degree leg burns—seriously, his flesh was literally melted, he was going to need skin grafts—would distract Notepad from what he’d accidentally said, he’d be wrong.

“In love?” Notepad asked, gleam in her crocodile eyes having multiplied. “What can you tell yours fans about this lucky someone?”

 

It took Patrick ages to escape. Eventually he’d given up on tact and flat-out ran. Notepad and Camera had chased him to the nearest el stop, but when he hopped aboard the miraculously timely brown line they gave up the pursuit, probably headed off to publish the article. Patrick found himself hoping that they worked for an obscure magazine, one that wouldn’t go to press for some weeks yet. That would buy him sufficient time to get out of the country.

It was all right to tell some reporters that he was in love. What wasn’t okay was not having a girl—or even a suitable boy—to thrust at them when they demanded who it was. He couldn’t even groom Saul into a suitable decoy—no, in his ‘interview’ he’d very clearly established that Saul was _not_ the object of his affections. Even if that bit of his incoherent stammering was cut in the print version, Notepad would still have it on file somewhere to throw back at him.

Patrick, coffee-stained, severely burnt, detoured a good 30 minutes by his impromptu trip on the brown line in the complete opposite direction of Joe’s, and utterly screwed, arrived a little over two hours late and in a foul mood. He wasn’t feeling particularly apologetic about it, either. If the guys had a problem with it, fuck them. Fuck everyone. His jeans were going to have to be surgically removed from his burnt flesh, and it was his hangover cure that had done the job. He was having a bad goddamn morning.

When there was no one at Joe’s to let him in, he wasn’t sure if it made things better or worse. So they’d had the meeting without him and dissembled, as if he couldn’t possibly had anything important to say. Or they’d waited for two hours and decided they’d reschedule despite the increasingly painful commute for them. Whatever the reason, Patrick wasn’t interested. It was a bad mood and a bad day and he was as furious with the guys for not being where he personally felt they ought to be as he was grateful he didn’t have to see them right now.

As much as he needed a new pair of pants and probably medical attention, Patrick didn’t feel like going home. He’d managed to accomplish exactly nothing today—the coffee he’d gotten spilled before he’d even gotten to taste it, the meeting he’d scrambled to over before he’d made it there—and crawling back home (or, you know, to a hospital, because from the feel of things he definitely needed medical attention), admitting defeat, after so much failure seemed unconscionable to him right now. He would, Patrick decided, walk to the lake. It was a clear, cool day, strong breeze, a small amount of sunlight filtering through the soothingly oppressive clouds. It was a perfect day for the beach. He could take off his shoes and bury his feet in the cool sand and stare out into the churning water and feel goosebumps on his arm, indicative of life. October in Chicago was the perfect season for the beach, Patrick felt. No sunscreen, no sunburn, and it wasn’t overrun with those damnable people who looked good in bathing suits. Sure, there’d be some people around, especially if he went down by the planetarium or Soldier Field, but if he picked the right stretch of sand he’d feel like he had the whole of Lake Michigan to himself. Patrick very much liked that feeling.

He headed to the Ohio Street Beach, by far his favorite spot on the shoreline, not minding that it was something of a long walk. He and Pete had sat at Ohio Street Beach a few years ago, in the fall, drinking out of a brown-bagged bottle and watching a storm roll in. It had been one of the most wonderful nights of his life, maybe even the night he’d fallen in love with Pete. He’d just felt so alive, so free, so electrified. He hadn’t wanted to lose that feeling, ever.

That had been before Ashlee.

Obviously.

Patrick eventually reached the beach and laid on his back in the cool sand, stretching out and letting the chill sink into his bones. He breathed, tasting the metallic bite to the lakeside air, and felt whole.

“Didn’t know you still came here,” a voice said quietly. Patrick opened his eyes and saw Pete, cast against the heaving grey sky, standing above him. His eyes looked old, the color of the seething lake, his hair dark against his browned skin. He was so beautiful. Patrick’s breath caught in his throat.

“All the time,” Patrick heard himself say. _Smooth_ , he congratulated himself, impressed that he’d been able to make like he didn’t hyperventilate with need at the mere sight of his friend. Being here centered him, calmed the howling love within. “You’re the one that moved away,” he added, in a friendly, cajoling tone. “I’ll never leave the city.”  
Pete sat down heavily beside him. “I believe it,” he said. “I didn’t feel like driving back home yet, so I came here.”

“That’s a fancy way of saying ‘Patrick, I’m stalking you’,” Patrick said lightly. He was amazed at how easily and unhindered it was all coming to him. It was like the old days, the way he’d been before Pete had started talking about leaving the band, the way their friendship had been before all this weird, unspokenly accusatory tension kicked up.

Pete laughed, but it didn’t sound quite sincere. “Got to make sure I don’t lose track of you. You’re an easier man to keep tabs on when you’re not avoiding me.”  
This was news to Patrick. “Avoiding you?” he repeated, momentarily stumped before cottoning on. “Oh, you mean this morning,” he supplemented before Pete could. “Missed the hell out of the meeting, didn’t I?”

“Yeah,” Pete agreed, a resigned sort of bite to his voice, like it pained him but he could deal with it.

“Funny story, that,” Patrick said lazily. He wasn’t feeling especially forthcoming, though he didn’t know why. He felt bizarrely self-possessed. “Suffice to say that I’ve sustained serious leg burns and been chased by journalists, and that’s pretty much how my morning went.”

Pete had a weird look on his face, but Patrick was hesitant to ask about it. Sure enough, after a few moments of silence, Pete said, “I’d wondered where they got the pictures.”

This, however, was still largely incomprehensible to Patrick. “Who, again?” he asked.

“Oh. The bane of my existence. _Oh No They Didn’t_. I assumed they just made it up, except for the pictures. They looked really recent. You were wearing—” Pete pointed—“that shirt.” He sighed. “I guess whoever you talked to leaked their stuff to the site.”

There were a lot of questions Patrick wanted to ask. For example, what was Pete doing checking in with that godforsaken website? Was he on the watch for more escaped pictures? Because Patrick liked to think he’d learned his lesson about taking—or at least, texting—pictures like that. Another one was if Pete thought he’d bailed on the meeting to hang out with the press, or just to avoid him. Because neither of those were activities Patrick was especially prone to.

“What did they say about me?” was all Patrick asked, voice guarded.

“That you were in love.” Pete didn’t quite meet his eyes.

That was exactly what _wasn’t_ meant to be taken from the encounter. Shit.

“Oh. Uh. That may have been an exaggeration—”

“So you’re not?” Pete interrupted. “The story’s a lie? Because I gotta say, Stump, if you were in love and I hadn’t gotten to meet her, I’d have to murder you. You know that, right? Murder you dead.”

Damn it all, but Patrick wasn’t comfortable with the lie. He couldn’t just let Pete’s assumptions whisk him away to a land of happiness, argyle unicorns, and peace.

“It’s not a lie per se,” Patrick hedged miserably. “I mean, I may have implied that I might be in love—”

Pete narrowed his eyes. “Then I want to meet her, Patrick. Today. Now. Tell me everything about her, and I’ll consider letting you live. Who is she?”

Patrick opened and closed his mouth, at a loss. What could he say to that?

 

 

 

**WELL, TWO THINGS. IF PATRICK SAYS…**

**“I CAN’T TELL YOU”…**  
…turn to chapter 48 and continue reading.

**“IT’S YOU”…**  
…turn to chapter 45 and continue reading.


	40. Chapter 40

“Patrick,” Pete said disparagingly, “we are men.”

“Last time I checked,” Patrick agreed. He felt he knew where this was going.

“So let me ask you. As men, what should we watch? A long, rambling Southern romance with more endings than Lord of the Rings, or a movie overflowing with blood and entrails and undead monsters?” Pete pressed.

“You know an awful lot about _Gone With the Wind_ ,” Patrick observed, smirking. “Like more than I know. And I’ve read the back of the case, so, you know, expert.”

Pete’s face flushed with color and he snatched _Zombieland_ out of Patrick’s hand. Even as Patrick quaked with silent laughter, he tore it out of its packaging and put in the disc. Patrick felt it wasn’t the time to point out that his particular terror of all things zombie-related was evocative of little girls and not men, especially since he’d just pulled ahead by an improbability in the masculinity contest. As the previews filled the large screen, Pete clapped his hands loudly. “Right!” he cried. If Patrick wasn’t mistaken, he was casting his voice more deeply than usual. “Beer’s practically the draught of manhood, so I’m getting you _three_.”

Most of a shared 12-pack and two hours later, Patrick was quaking with terror on the couch and the end credits were rolling.

“Turn it off, please,” he squeaked to Pete. The alcoholic infusion of testosterone had done little to bolster his spirits. He couldn’t reach the remote and shut off the television himself because if he extended an appendage off the couch, it would be torn off by a ravaging zombie. He knew this as if it were fact. When Pete complied, his next demand was the lights; but the overhead bulbs in the living room were not enough. Pete took point, so any potential zoms would eat him first while Patrick ran screaming, and they searched the whole apartment, turning on every light—even the one in the stove—and leaving them on. Once the apartment was illuminated to the brink of overloading the power grid, Patrick insisted they arm themselves—Pete with a yardstick and Patrick with a fire extinguisher. He _really_ needed to buy a baseball bat, for occasions exactly like this one. God forbid if all he had to fend off the zombie hordes was a half-size fire extinguisher. He didn’t even know how to _use_ a fire extinguisher. He was zombie meat for sure.

To his eternal credit, Pete did not once laugh as they went through this compulsory safety regimen. He didn’t so much as snicker when Patrick set up a rather wobbly barricade involving an ottoman and his coffee table. It wasn’t until Patrick sat gripping his weapon for dear life on the couch that Pete betrayed even a hint of mockery. “Do you think I’ll be safe if I go to the kitchen for another beer?”

Patrick glowered darkly. “Oh, I _hope_ they get you,” he said petulantly. “But I need you here so they’re distracted by tearing out your intestines while I escape.”

Pete laughed openly, but it wasn’t a laugh of defamation; it was fondness. “You’re the greatest,” he sighed happily, sinking into the couch. “Not gonna sleep a minute tonight, are you?”

Patrick shook his head mutely. He’d never heard of zombie tacticians, but if they were out there, they were surely waiting for him to let his guard down and sleep to strike. To be on the safe side, Patrick planned to never sleep again.

Pete did that lovely adoring laugh again. He slung a comforting arm around Patrick’s shoulder (sending electricity over his skin) and squeezed. “Well, if I’m going to be up all night protecting you, I need another beer. You coming?”

Patrick felt momentarily blindsided. He’d not expected this. He figured the movie would end and Pete would go home to his family, as per usual. On one hand, he wanted to stay up with Pete all night more than almost anything; on the other, he didn’t quite trust himself. There had been a moment on tour, tipsy and tired in a hotel room, when he had felt so warm and whole and close to Pete that he’d come very close to telling him everything. Could he really risk it?

 

 

 

**IF PATRICK…**

**DISSUADES PETE’S POTENTIALLY CATASTROPHIC PLAN OF ACTION…**  
…turn to chapter 44 and continue reading.

**GIVES IN TO BASER DESIRES AND LETS PETE STAY…**  
…turn to chapter 42 and continue reading.


	41. Chapter 41

Patrick’s phone buzzed in his hand even as he considered it. A text from Pete filled the screen—¬ _Earth to trick, where u at?_ —and he sighed. It was going to take him at least 15 minutes to walk to Joe’s, and Starbucks wasn’t even on the way. If he headed out now and all went well, he wouldn’t be much more than an hour late.

Patrick set his course and, true to plan, reached Joe’s just over an hour after he was meant to. He was buzzed in promptly, in a way he couldn’t help but feel was passive-aggressive, and found Joe’s door unlocked. He gave a perfunctory knock before letting himself in; three stony-faced men sat around a table within, staring at him.

“Hi guys,” he said weakly, giving a small wave. His bandmates did not look amused. He should have brought coffee. Damn it.

Patrick put on his most charming smile and helped himself to a chair. “Sooo, what are we talking about?” he asked at length, because apparently the only thing on his friends’ itinerary was ‘stare at Patrick ‘til he cries’.

Andy sighed and said in a pained way, “You’re late, Patrick.”

“Not sure why you felt that needed to be said, but yeah, I seem to be,” he blustered on, trying to sound chipper. “Kind of last minute notice, wasn’t it? It’s not like I just sit at home all day. I’m a busy guy,” he added, blatantly lying.

His friends were not impressed. Only Pete had the decency to cringe and look embarrassed. “That was my bad,” Pete said, breaking their foreboding union at last. “I’m the one who wanted to do this as soon as possible.”

Joe clapped a supportive hand to Pete’s shoulder. Pete nodded appreciatively. Patrick began to feel as if he’d missed something. Maybe it was not simply agitation at his lateness, he began to consider. Maybe there was an underlying factor in the gloom of the room, one he was not yet aware of. Because this seemed like an awful lot of animosity from a group of men had always been far from timely themselves.

“Uh, I’m sorry,” said Patrick, “but I feel like a missed something.”

“Maybe if you showed up on time…” Andy muttered, but Joe spoke over him. “Pete’s made an announcement.”

Patrick looked to Pete with interest. The other man did not quite meet his eyes. “I’m leaving the band,” he said quietly.

It was like Patrick had clicked on to autopilot. An easy, confident laugh flowed out of him to meet Pete’s words. “Don’t be ridiculous,” Patrick said. “You can’t do that.” He wasn’t sure where the words had come from or why he’d said them, but he felt solid and sound and didn’t wish to redact them.

Pete looked less comfortable. He met Patrick’s gaze, bemused, and laughed nervously. “I, uh, was telling Joe and Andy—um, well, I know this is going to be hard for you guys, but—”

Patrick dismissed this out of hand. “You’re not hearing me, Pete,” he cut in. “You can’t quit, and—” Pete began to protest but Patrick only spoke more loudly—“and you don’t want to.”

To this, Pete could say nothing. “Patrick,” Andy scolded while Pete gaped. “Come on, man, calm down! Of course he doesn’t _want_ to—”

Patrick ignored Andy, whom he had always rather liked. “No,” he insisted. “ _You_ don’t even think you should. I know it. I know _you_. Right now, you’re feeling like you’ve got some kind of—some kind of obligation, and—”

Andy and Joe shot Patrick horrified looks, and Pete came alive again. “To my family, you mean?” he asked scathingly.

“Loving people doesn’t have to be an obligation,” Patrick shot back challengingly. “It can be easy!”

But he’d given something away, he realized too late. Pete was giving him an imploring look and he’d gone too far to turn back. “Loving you,” Patrick said quietly, going for broke, “is easy. You don’t do me any favors—I want you to understand me, as a situation it’s incredibly difficult—but the way I feel about you is… it comes naturally to me, Pete. You can’t leave because things are bad with Ashlee. Quitting the band is not going to solve anything for you.”

It probably wasn’t the best or most tactful moment to impart this wisdom, however; Pete was still gaping at him. “What are you saying, ’trick?” he sputtered, and Patrick had no illusions about what precisely he meant.

Patrick took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said, mostly to himself, breathing deep. “All right. You want to do this proper? Let’s do it, then.” He looked into Pete’s eyes with not a small amount of heart-palpitating terror and smiled. “Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz, I love you.”

Pete stood so quickly that his chair toppled over behind him. Joe and Andy, both of whom Patrick was barely aware of at this point, started violently. Patrick stood more slowly, wondering what was coming now. Would Pete take him in his arms and make all his dreams come true? Unlikely. Would Pete scream and storm and walk out of his life forever, hate gorging between them too deep a valley, too harsh a void? Possibly. Probably. Yes. Really, if Pete was okay with the whole thing, it really wouldn’t have made sense for him to jump to his feet and start advancing like that, Patrick thought rationally.

Pete made his way stiffly around the table and it was looking like he’d chosen option C—break Patrick’s jaw. Patrick resolved to face his fate like a man, whatever was coming—this with a silent hope that Joe or Andy, those frozen cowards, would grow the balls to intervene, because it was easier to be noble when your friends weren’t useless blobs of flesh—but with Joe and Andy sitting limp and lifeless and his own arms held with less nobility than bloody-minded resignation at his sides, there was nothing to dissuade Pete’s wheeling fist from making contact with his nose.

As soon as Pete’s punch landed, the room sprung into action. Joe and Andy were on their feet, yelling, Joe choosing _this_ moment to restrain Pete, Patrick’s hands clapped to his pain-shattered face and gushing eyes and nose. “Shit!” he yelled, eyes streaming from the force of the blow, blood dripping through his fingers (though his nose didn’t feel especially broken, per se, just supremely offended). “Jesus god, Pete! You were supposed to punch me in the jaw, damn it! Nothing soft or crunchy!”

His yell, however full of rage and disgruntlement, shifted the breaking-point quality of the room away from violence and enmity. Before he knew how it happened, they were all of them helpless with laughter; Pete slumped against a wall, gasping, “Your jaw? Didn’t realize,” in the midst of his crippling hysterics. Joe was doubled over and Andy used the table to support himself, and Patrick kept choking and gurgling as he snorted his own blood.

It was Patrick—bloody-faced and crying—who laughed harder than any of them. He laughed with joy, with freedom; with the amazing lightness of a burden shared, a burden weighing on him no more. He loved Pete; it was unfortunate, if unavoidable, but it wasn’t his solitary torment anymore. Pete—hell, even Andy and Joe—knew it too. That in itself was near as powerful a thing as a happy ending might have been, because Patrick knew his heart’s desire was rather far-fetched. It was so, so good just knowing he didn’t have to suffer it alone, in silence; he couldn’t have hoped for more.

It wasn’t until later, when the laughter had died and Patrick was scrubbing blood from his face in the bathroom, that the conversation continued. Pete let himself in without knocking, latching the door behind him. He held out a bag of ice awkwardly. Patrick, preoccupied with a washcloth, didn’t take it; Pete sat down on the lid of the toilet and toyed with the bag listlessly. “I, um, I’m sorry I hit you.”

Patrick waved him off with a bloodied rag. “I’m sorry I let you,” he said lightly. What else could he really say? ‘Oh, really, I don’t mind’? ‘I’m sorry I’m in love with you’? Somehow he didn’t want to bring it up. Pete laughed rather falsely, hand constricting briefly around the bag of ice. “Yeah,” he agreed quietly. Silence ensued until Patrick, judging his face passably clean, shut off the tap and made to open the door again.

“Wait,” Pete said suddenly. Patrick, who had a hell of a face-ache and frankly was still rather upset about his best friend leaving the band—not to mention his private feeling that the nose-punching had been slightly uncalled for—was not _really_ in the mood for discussion. Still, as a gesture of goodwill, he kept his sigh down to the minimum as he turned to face Pete, who glanced up from staring at his hands and the ice, eyes barely visible through the hanging curtain of his bangs.

“There’s still blood on your shirt,” he said, almost inaudibly.

Patrick looked down at the t-shirt he was wearing. It was one of his favorites, and it was true that its front was liberally drenched with blood. “Yeah,” he agreed. These were keen, hitherto untapped observational skills of Pete’s, he allowed himself to think sarcastically.

“It’ll be ruined.” Pete sounded a little out of breath. Patrick wondered if it was the telltale rabid breathing of mounting feral rage, and whether he should bother running (and if he did, in zigzags or a straight line?) or if that would only make the inevitable mauling frenzy worse. “You should soak it.”

“And wander around Joe’s—” _Shirtless_ , he’d been going to say. Wander around Joe’s _shirtless_. But Pete had stood, and was standing very close, fingertips ghosting across Patrick’s skin just beneath the hem of his bloody shirt, leaving burning trails. Patrick’s words died in his throat and a soft moan fluttered free, skin prickling with chills as Pete slid his fingers over the downy skin of Patrick’s back, lifting his t-shirt over his head.

Pete’s lips pressed lightly against Patrick’s back, leaving sear-marks, as his long-fingered hands fumbled with Patrick’s belt. “And your pants,” he murmured, kissing down Patrick’s spine in a hot, fluttering line. “They need to soak too.”

“Joe and Andy will—” Patrick breathed in a failing whisper as Pete’s teeth closed around a bit of skin low on his back, wresting his belt buckle free at last. Pete’s tongue explored the crevice of Patrick’s back and tugged his jeans down around his ankles, saying into Patrick’s back, “I sent them for coffee.”

“Are you—sure?” Patrick gasped as Pete’s hand slipped over his hip, thumb digging into the bruise-dark hollow of his hip bone.

Pete stood, sliding his body against Patrick’s skin as he did so, letting Patrick feel the hardness there. “I can’t leave my family,” Pete’s voice came hot in Patrick’s ear. “I can’t stay with the band and I can’t stay with you, but we can have this, right now, and hope it’s enough to carry us the rest of our days.” Patrick’s whole body tensed as Pete’s hand strayed into his boxers, closing firmly around his already straining erection. Pete’s tongue curled over the soft skin just behind Patrick’s ear and he whispered, “So yes. I’m sure.”

Pete’s hand began to move and Patrick turned to face him at last, their lips crashing together like apotheosis, a hot and needing clash of sublimity and violence, tongues and teeth and thunder, and there was nothing he could do but give in, kiss back, and let it take him.

 

 

 

**_the end_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will advise you, as I advised the lovely woman I wrote this for, to go ahead and insert your own very steamy smut there. This is one of my favorite endings; make it a good one! *lecherous eyebrow waggling*


	42. Chapter 42

“How chivalrous of you,” Patrick said scathingly.

“I can never resist a damsel in distress,” Pete countered with a wicked grin. Patrick brandished his fire extinguisher threateningly, but Pete was not impressed. “Please, like you even know how to use that thing,” he scoffed.

Not long thereafter, two intoxicated men lay tangled together snoring on Patrick’s couch, _Cheers_ reruns happily filling the room with their laugh tracks and casting a dancing rainbow of light on the wilting heap of flame retardant foam that they had eventually coaxed into freedom.

Patrick woke to sunlight filtering across his face and a strong arm wrapped about his chest. For a moment, he relaxed in the warmth and closeness of it, soothed by the steady heartbeat and breath on his ear; in the next moment he realized it was Pete and everything changed quickly after that. First, the moment of his dreams wasn’t as picturesque as he’d imagined it; dried drool was on his cheek, and his left arm was beginning to wake from its stupor with a wave of pins and needles. Second, the knowledge that it was illicit, accidental, _stolen_ was an inexorable part of the scene, and the mere act of knowing it wracked him with a slippery kind of pain and despair that gave his hangover something to contend with.

A wild panic gripped him and he shimmied out of Pete’s arms, tumbling to the floor recklessly. Maybe it was the sound, maybe it was the violent jostling; whatever it was, Pete woke. “Mmm, what? Patrick?” he mumbled thickly, stretching languorously.

Patrick froze up, for a moment. Facing Pete now, in the wake of accidental intimacy, the most tenderness he could ever hope for, seemed too much. He couldn’t do it.

Patrick turned on heel and ran. Pete’s mumbles followed him, the man emitting them stumbling behind, but Patrick did not slow. Even as Pete called out “Patrick! Hey, wait!”, he reached the haven of his bedroom, slamming and locking the door behind him.

Pete’s body thumped against the door a moment later and Patrick sat dry-mouthed on his bed, wondering what he’d been thinking, exactly. _This_ was his master plan? Brush off the emergence of his unbearable longing by barricading himself in his room and making a big deal about it? _This_ was how he was going to save face? Oh, well done, Patrick. _Nice one_.

Pete had begun pounding on the door. “Patrick!” he bellowed, sounding more alert now. “Patrick, let me in, we can talk about—about whatever this is!”

 

 

 

**IF PATRICK LETS HIM IN…**  
…turn to chapter 46 and continue reading.

**IF PATRICK IGNORES HIM ‘TIL HE LEAVES…**  
…turn to chapter 47 and continue reading.


	43. Chapter 43

It wasn’t a question, really. Pete was his best friend. If Pete was having a bad time of things, it was not Patrick’s job to grill him on his quality of life and personal shortcomings; it was Patrick’s job to be what Pete needed him to be: his friend.

It settled over Patrick with the peculiarly disarming quality of truth. Pete didn’t need yet another hopeless lunatic mooning over him; what he needed was a friend. His life was falling apart all around him; he felt hopeless; he felt lost. But Patrick could help with that. He could be there for Pete. He could put himself aside and simply be there.

Patrick gave Pete his bravest smile. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, voice (he hoped) neutrally supportive.

Pete gave Patrick an evaluating look. “I love what we do,” he said at length. “The writing, the shows, all of the people we meet and the things we get to do, the fans we get to reach out to. I can’t imagine life without it.” Pete looked down at his son and Patrick could see his heart breaking. At once he was both infinitely glad not to lay more pain upon him and heartbroken himself not to pull Pete into his arms and comfort him. “I’m… not a very good father, ’trick. And a pretty terrible husband. I… I mean, that’s just not all right. I feel like it’s all slipping away from me—like I’m losing control. I have to give something up, Patrick. I have to be here for my family or… or I’ll lose everything.”

Patrick knew, then, that he’d made the right choice. “You know I’ll always be here, right?” he asked quietly. It was all he could do. “I’ll always be here. We can… I’ll talk to the guys. We can go on hiatus or something—the band, I mean—and you can focus on… Ashlee and Bronx.” The words seemed too large, gritty somehow. It was difficult to force them past his tongue.

Pete gave Patrick another surprised look. “You’d do that for me? I thought you’d be the one fighting me on this.”

Patrick smiled even though he was dying. He put a hand to Pete’s shoulder and did his damnedest not to feel a thrill. “I’ll do anything I can to help you get things under control.”

Pete looked at him in exactly the way Patrick had always wanted him to, eyes wide and unblinking, cheeks flushed, lips slightly parted. It was his moment, he knew—the closest thing he’d ever get to an invitation. If he was ever going to make his move, to kiss Pete, the time for it was now—he knew Pete, loved Pete, could see in Pete’s eyes that he wanted this, wanted Patrick, if only for this one weak moment, and he squeezed Pete’s shoulder affectionately and said, “I love you, Pete. You’re my best friend. You’ll always have me.”

The moment faded, going lucid around the edges. Pete, still reeling in his own helplessness and loss, seemed to regain himself a bit; whatever he saw in Patrick’s face was not the answer he’d been looking for. “Thank you,” he said, a little hurt, a little weak. “You’re a… a really good friend.”

Patrick himself was fighting back tears, smile fixed stiffly to his face as it all filtered away from him. There it went, everything he’d ever longed for—and he let it go, watched it fall away. This was the penultimate act of love, this sacrifice—this was the end of the things. What Pete had said—a really good friend. Yes, he was. Or at least—he would be. Starting here, today, for the first time in years, he would be.

 

 

 

**_the end_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Achievement unlocked: Melancholy ending.


	44. Chapter 44

It was a novel idea, of course, if a disastrous plan; spending the night wide-eyed and whispering, sharing Patrick’s squeaky leather couch under the pretense of terror, spending tomorrow in the weird dissociative haze that had shadowed all-nighters ever since Patrick had passed into his third decade of life. 

But late at night, when they were the only wakeful souls, Patrick felt all too keenly the ache of being parted from the man he so devoutly knew to be his soulmate, his other half. Fear and beer alike had weakened Patrick’s resolve; he dared not let Pete stay. Best case scenario, his lonely flesh would misconstrue Pete’s proximity, and he would be gripped with arousal-concealing terror off and on for the next few hours. It was one thing to behave this way on tour; it was another entirely when the carriage turned back into a pumpkin and Pete shared his heart and bed and life with his wife and not Patrick. That was the real torture of touring—for weeks, even months, he was Pete’s sole confidant, and the intimacy and closeness they shared was staggering. But it always ended. 

It had been better, even, when Pete had still lived in the city. But his suburban life seemed so far removed from the bond they shared and the halcyon of their early friendship; Patrick felt like a dirty old man hanging around a Catholic girl’s school with his hand down his trousers every time the faintest longing possessed him. His own position, outside of it all, looking in on Pete’s life, was painfully raw, ever-present.

It was inevitable that at least a fraction of this turmoil show on his face, because Pete frowned slightly and cuffed him on the shoulder.

“Hey,” he cajoled. “Hey. Are you still upset about what happened before? Talk to me, Lunchbox.”

Patrick tried to force a cheerful look onto his face, but he was tired. It was hard for him to gauge his own success. “No,” he said, and it came out sharper than he’d aimed for. He winced, softened his voice, and went on, “I mean, that was forever ago. I’m, uh, just capable of, you know, fending off the zombie apocalypse on my own tonight.”

This was a lie and Pete knew it. “I thought throwing me to the hordes as a distraction was your first line of defense and instrumental to the overall plan!”

“I never said—”

“Word for word, Stump! Word. For. _Word_.” Pete sounded a little hurt that Patrick had developed a strategy that didn’t involve his dismemberment and being eaten alive.

“C’mon, Pete,” Patrick said wearily. “We had a good time and I don’t want to fight, but you should get going.”

Pete gave Patrick an appraising look, as if he didn’t quite believe what was happening. “Are you kicking me out, Stump?” he asked, incredulous and clearly not believing Patrick was capable of making such a demand in seriousness; there was at least half a laugh in his voice.

Patrick did not smile. “I guess I am,” he said, hurrying to soften the blow by adding, “Look, if you stay here you’ll have to sleep on a couch and Ash will worry, so—”

Pete’s face hardened at the mention of his wife’s name. It seemed to Patrick increasingly like he did not like to be reminded of her in any context. “So this is about Ash again?” Pete asked bluntly, sour-faced. “Because I’m sick of defending myself to you.”

Patrick held his head in his hands. All this had spiraled so quickly out of his control. Now it was going to be a big thing. He hated big things. “No, I don’t care who you—” he tried to protest, but Pete was unstoppable. He was, and had always been, the Juggernaut of self-righteousness. (Bitch.)

“Like hell you don’t!” Pete cried. “You’ve _always_ been a real prick about who I fuck, you know that? And when I found someone who loved me—well, she never stood a chance with you, did she? You fucking _hate_ that that you’re not the only one who cares about me anymore, that I have anything at all in my life that’s good that isn’t you. It’s pathetic how you need to be the most important thing in my world all the time!”

Stillness settled in the wake of Pete’s careless acidity. “You can be the biggest dick sometimes,” Patrick said quietly, because it was too hard to say ‘you’re right’. He could feel tears clawing up his throat and it wasn’t zombies that scared him anymore, it was Pete seeing him cry. “You should leave now,” Patrick said firmly, casting his eyes at the floor so Pete wouldn’t see the dampness in them.

“Couldn’t agree more!” Pete said too loudly, too caustically, and marched out of Patrick’s absurdly lit apartment with a set jaw, chased by ringing silence.

It was strange, Patrick thought, but he didn’t feel like crying anymore. He felt like doing something altogether more drastic. Leaving the country, maybe. Shattering all his glassware. Getting a haircut. Something like that.

Inspiration struck him suddenly. He could kill himself! Or at least look into it. There was no harm in looking into it, right? _Or_ —hot damn, was he an idea machine tonight!—he could escort himself to the bars, find some faceless boy willing to sleep with him, and exorcise the memory of Pete, flagellating himself with someone else’s willing flesh.

 

 

**IF PATRICK CONTEMPLATES SUICIDE…**  
…turn to chapter 23 and continue reading.

**IF PATRICK GOES SLUT-HUNTING…**  
…turn to chapter 25 and continue reading.


	45. Chapter 45

A wise man would have steeled himself, looked deep into his soul, and invented some bullshit story about a girl he’d met in Milan. He would have waxed lovesick about how geography had damned his very happiness to the realm of impossibility, and added in a choked voice that it was really too painful for him to talk about just now—a choked whisper, _so soon_. Such a performance would likely be gratified with a brotherly hug from Pete, leaving the wise man to seethe hotly in floods of incest.

But Patrick wasn’t really cut out to be a wise man. The whole lifestyle, he felt, didn’t really reflect what he found to be chief proponents of his character. For example, he probably would get shitty cell phone reception if he lived on a mountain top, and those orange, baggy holy robes would look like hell on him. He was a butterbody. You don’t put butterbodies in baggy orange. It’s just bad taste.

So instead, he opened his mouth, threw himself in front of an oncoming el train, and told the truth.

“It’s you.”

A quick note on telling the truth, sponsored by the Patrick Stump School of Ethics and Intrigue: _Telling the truth is the most singularly idiotic thing a human begin can do. Maybe children can get away with it all right, because they’re small and cute and whatever, but if you’re still being honest by the time you’ve hit puberty there’s something wrong with you._ Blatant negligence of self-preservation, most likely, which was something Patrick had always prided himself on. Patrick had always accepted that he was just one man, and evolution a maddeningly huge, unstoppable force; _one man_ didn’t go up again all of _evolution_. That was suicide.

Ostensibly, Patrick was well-acquainted with reason and all the factors of contributing to the wisdom of lying one’s ass off in a situation such as this one. But the words had left his mouth without consulting him—in fact, he suspected that ventriloquism and foul play were afoot—and now they hung in the air, toxic and inexorable.

Pete was staring quite intently, green-shot eyes roving over his rigid face and body for any clues. Patrick thought hard, scrambling wildly for a way to play it off as a joke—something, _anything_ to say.

Pete beat him to it. “You—you didn’t say _that_ to a reporter, did you?” he choked out. Pete had an unpleasantly colorful history with the press. Patrick professing public love for Pete—yeah, he could understand why that thought might be worrisome. The magazines and slavish masses would have a field day on that particular tidbit.  
Didn’t make him feel any less like jumping into traffic, of course, but he understood.

“Uh, no,” Patrick said miserably. “Didn’t plan on saying it to anyone, did I? I was saving that one for my deathbed. I mean, I hate to waste a perfectly good deathbed confession.”  
Pete forced an awkward laugh, and silence stretched between them. Patrick stared fixedly into the lake. Maybe he’d just walk out into it until he could walk no more. He wouldn’t struggle as its cold, dark arms closed over his head; he would welcome the embrace as that of a lover and softly, so softly slip under.

The nudge of Pete’s sandy foot on his leg drew him from his dark reverie. “You’re a million miles away,” Pete said in a small voice. “Talk to me.”

“What is there to say?” Patrick asked, surprised by the hoarseness of his own voice, as if his lungs and throat were scarred from gasping and choking on icy lake water already.

“A lot, I think,” Pete said, scooting closer. “More than ever before, maybe.”

“I’m not discussing this with _you_ of all people,” Patrick protested in his new gravelly voice.

“Why not?” Pete asked. “I’m your best friend. Who else are you going to talk to about this?”

Patrick didn’t have anything to counter with, so he kept silent. Pete went on, needling, “I don’t want to lose you, Stump.”

There were tears on Patrick’s cheeks now. He felt angry and stupid and lost and weak, and it was difficult to force words past this great tangle of self.

But Pete had seen the tears, the twisting grimace scarring Patrick’s face, and his hands fell on Patrick now, trying to touch and hold and feel all of him at once. Pete’s fingers slicked through the tears, brushed lips, traced Patrick’s features and cupped his jaw; his other hand stole over Patrick’s chest, palming his heart and gripping his arm and stroking his clavicle. All of this was done absently, anxiously, as if it were normal and natural and right, and with desperation; Pete seemed unaware of the intimate, possessive motions of his hands; his face was a mirror of despondency and he cried out in the pain Patrick’s distress gave him. “Patrick, Patrick, hey!” Pete said helplessly, now pulling Patrick against his chest and stroking his short, gold hair. He comforted the other man thoughtlessly, as if Patrick were his own wife or child, someone he was allowed and expected and welcomed to lay hands on, someone he loved in need, someone he felt powerfully compelled to help—almost as if the words and gestures were torn dripping from his breast, unstoppable. “Please, don’t,” Pete pleaded childishly now, murmuring into Patrick’s neck. “Don’t be sad, we’ll—we’ll figure this out, and—” 

Holding and clinging, petting and rocking, whispering meaningless comforts while Patrick cried in anger and futility—it changed so quickly, so imperceptibly, from comfort to something more. First he was whispering into Patrick’s neck and a moment later he was not just pressing words but also his lips to the soft, warm skin; his hand in Patrick’s hair tangled deep and pulled back, tilting, and Patrick whimpered, halfway between tears and something else; Pete’s lips had travelled up his neck, lingering to close teeth around the heartbeat trapped there, to Patrick’s jaw, to his wet face; his motions had grown frenzied, lips pressed to teardropped eyelids, to damp cheeks, to lips. Patrick’s small sobs had shifted now to quiet moans; the tight knot of his anguished limbs had loosened, unwound, and he no longer cradled himself but clung to be Pete and, after a time, he began to kiss back, mirroring urgency, mirroring violence, mirroring need. In the haze of it all, the pain and the pleasure and the longing, Patrick was still faintly aware that this, too, was suffering—that this too would splinter and end and become just another moment sharp enough to break himself open on. He was not surprised when Pete broke away, not surprised by the hurt and self-hatred that immediately welled up in the wake of Pete’s warmth, in the hole where something was.

Pete was starry-eyed and breathless, cheeks flushed and streaked by Patrick’s tears. “That—that was—”

A dead little smile sat on Patrick’s lips, the taste of Pete strong on them. Just a few minutes of perfection—just enough to know what he was really missing—just so he could forever torture himself by imagining that beautiful, crystallized moment in which Pete Wentz, at last, wanted him.

There were two ways he could play this, dead-inside Patrick Stump thought calmly. He could be ugly, hurt Pete like Pete had hurt him. Or he could be understanding, make things easy, and let go. Pete had a family. Pete had a life. Patrick would spend the rest of his life running headlong into walls chasing this moment if he didn’t let go. Having lived the highest point of his life, knowing that nothing would ever again come close to where he’d been, knowing that it was all downhill from here—well, what did he have to lose, really? Pete, on the other hand, stood to lose everything.

So. Time to do the right thing, then. No matter how wrong it might feel.

“That was nice of you,” Patrick supplemented coolly. “Thank you. I know you can’t be what I want you to be, and I understand. Our friendship is important to me and I don’t want to jeopardize it.” He spoke the words flatly, as if they were rehearsed, and couldn’t help it. He stared hard into Lake Michigan’s tempestuous currents, unable to look at Pete as he broke himself open and got up on display for the last time. All of it, everything, for the last time.

“Patrick—” Pete started, but even hearing him speak made it harder, almost too hard, almost more than Patrick could bear. Pete’s words would undo this icy chill, make him feel alive again, and he would lose the selfless strength he needed to go on. After all: only the dead were truly selfless, and Pete had the worst habit of making Patrick’s heart beat.

“Go home Pete,” he urged, voice ever colder. “We’ll be okay. You do what you need to to forget about this, put it behind you, and I’ll—well. I never expected you to feel the same way. This was… more than I’d ever dreamed. I’m all right. I’ll call tomorrow.” He said it all, every word he could reach, everything he could think of that would get rid of Pete while his strength still held. He emptied himself onto the sand at Pete’s feet, words and semiotics in a hopeless tangle, snagged on the knots of his intestine, torn by the panicked struggle of his dying heart.

“Don’t do that,” Pete said, refusing to play along. His arms were wrapped tight around his own knees, pressed to his chest. “Don’t push me out. Are you just going to pretend none of this happened?”

“Yes,” Patrick said decisively, turning his head to squint sideways at Pete. As far as he could tell, it sounded like a foolproof plan. “I am.” But looking had been a mistake. Pete was flushed, either from their hasty embrace or the chill coming off the black water, and his lips were set in a petulant frown. The heavy black bar of his brow was creased over his eyes, and he was visibly stymied by behavior he evidently deemed erratic.

“I thought this is what you wanted,” Pete pressed, looking deeply cross, as if Patrick was the one being ridiculous.

A joyless laugh escaped Patrick’s lips. “How obliging of you,” he said, and he was no longer doing the right thing. He was being petty; he was being ugly. He couldn’t stop himself. He was weak and teeming with evil and blackness within. The only thing he wanted anymore was for Pete to hurt like he did.

Pete looked a little angry now. “That’s not fair,” he protested levelly. “I don’t know what happened—I mean, I just—it just happened—but that’s not fair. I’m just as confused as you are.”

Patrick laughed again. “Confused?” he asked bitingly. “I’m not confused. I know _exactly_ what I want. I want _you_.”

“But you won’t have me?” Pete asked. Patrick could tell he was still dazzled by the heat of their brief union. He didn’t know what he was saying, didn’t know what he was doing. He was caught up in the moment, wouldn’t recognize himself til much later, when he had ruined things. It wasn’t _real_ , Patrick reminded himself; it seemed real, it felt real, but Pete was… mercurial. And right now, he was not himself. 

Patrick wanted more than anything to take advantage of that. It wasn’t love for Pete that stopped him; it was knowledge of the pain to follow, when Pete woke up falling and howled to take it all back. It was the disgust that would be on Pete’s face when he remembered their time together and the things they’d done, the shudder that would wrack his limbs even as he wrapped them possessively around Ashlee, whom he would have lied into submission, into taking him back. It was the hurt he’d suffer when Pete packed up his things, moved out, ran home to his family—it was how Patrick would feel when the man who wanted this was gone, maybe forever, and the true Pete, the one who never would have kissed him, never would have loved him, returned.

“Maybe it seems that way now,” Patrick said at last, “but I assure you, it’s the other way around.”

Patrick got to his feet and stretched. So. He’d walk down the beach and leave Pete behind, maybe forever, before Pete could turn around and do it to him. The end, happily ever after, roll credits.

Pete, too, leapt to his feet, not cooperating. “Patrick, wait,” he said, clinging to Patrick’s sandy sleeve. “I know you don’t believe me but I mean this, I do. We can try, can’t we? We can at least try.”

_Yes_ , everything in Patrick screamed. Yes. This was madness, this was suffering, say yes! He felt his desire to turn into Pete’s arms as a physical pain; his longing was so great, so insurmountable, as to crush the very breath from his flayed lungs.

He opened his mouth and said, “Good-bye, Pete.” And he turned and walked away down the stony beach, and he didn’t dare look back.

The end.

Happily ever after.

Roll credits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I won't lie to you, this one's brutal. I recommend listening to The Tide by The Spill Canvas if you want to feel especially miserable while you read this one. But don't worry! I promise, there are merrier endings!


	46. Chapter 46

Apparently Patrick was weak-resolved as a person, because he barely held out two minutes before he let Pete in. For one thing, the incessant knocking was not doing his headache any favors. For another, Pete could foreseeably keep at it day, and it was _really_ not doing his headache any favors.

“Fine, all right, if it means so freaking much to you,” Patrick muttered crabbily as he unlocked his door and popped it open. Apparently not having expected such prompt success, and still at least three parts unconscious, Pete stood lurching uncertainly in the doorway. Patrick turned his back on his friend and threw himself unceremoniously across his rumpled bed.

“What was that all about?” Pete asked when he’d recovered.

“Me moving from room to room in my own home and you throwing a hissy fit about it? I really have no idea,” Patrick replied as scathingly as he could manage.

Pete wasn’t buying it. “I’m referring more to the bit where I fall asleep with you in my arms and wake up to your look of horror and frantic escape,” he said casually. “Ring any bells?”

Patrick opened and closed his mouth, rolling onto his other side to look at Pete. Pete wore a smug little smile and perched on the edge of the bed like he owned it. “I don’t know _what_ you’re talking about,” Patrick said at last, with as much dignity as he could muster. (It was less than you’d think.)

His mortification must have been amusing, because Pete’s smirk gave way to a grin. “One of the nicest nights of my life and the lady can’t recall a thing,” he said wickedly. “Wonder why that keeps happening to me?” When Patrick buried his face in his pillow and groaned, Pete flopped down on the bed next to him. He laid on his side, facing Patrick, and draped a casually possessive arm over Patrick’s hip. “I mean it, you know,” Pete said, sounding more serious. “It was a really nice night. Can’t remember the last time I slept so well.”

Patrick, who had gone still when Pete touched him (because for as touchy-feely as Pete was, this was something different, deliberate, not as careless as he’d packaged it), now stopped breathing altogether. What did Pete mean by that? Surely not what Patrick wanted him to mean. Surely not—

“Sleeping next to you like that,” Pete clarified, “feels like being home.” Pete laughed, rumbling Patrick’s inert body with the movement. “Re _lax_ , Stump,” he said. “It’s safe to breathe. I already know you like me.”

At this, Patrick’s heart gave out. If he’d been breathing, he would have choked on and then smothered in his pillow. He realized that laying here in paralyzed silence instead of, say, resisting and denying Pete’s casual accusation, was actually pretty incriminating, but there was nothing he could do about that until his heart started beating again.

“Anyway, I wanted to know if you liked it too,” Pete went on. He was doing a strange thing with his hand. He was moving his fingers up and down the small of Patrick’s back, almost stroking it. It was actually pretty difficult to think about anything else. “Because—as I said—I know you have feelings for me, and I thought maybe we could do things like this more often.”

Patrick extracted his face from his pillow because reality showed no signs of dispersing and he really _was_ suffocating, and prepared to launch his campaign of denial. He’d barely filled his lungs with sweet, sweet air when Pete’s lazily stroking hand moved to grasp his hip and the other man leaned down to press a fleeting kiss to his freshly exposed lips. Pete smiled prettily at the look of pure astonishment on Patrick’s face as everything inside him died and was reborn.

“Not much of a first kiss, I know,” Pete said conversationally, and then gestured to his own mouth. He was treating all this like it was perfectly normal, no big deal. “Morning breath,” he explained. “Can I borrow your toothbrush and give it another shot?”

Patrick remained stunned into silence, merely gaping at Pete. With a smile of naked affection, Pete laid a gentle hand to Patrick’s stubble-rough cheek. “I love you,” he said, staring with a wonder of his own into Patrick’s eyes. “If you didn’t know it before, you know it now. I love you, and I want to be with you, and right now I want to kiss you and hold you and make a proper go of it, so if you’ve got a toothbrush…”

Perhaps he was still in shock, still confused beyond all reason; but, even if he needed asking twice, a third time was not necessary. Patrick propelled himself off the bed and raced for the bathroom, Pete laughing happily and trotting along in his wake. Patrick’s hand trailed behind him, hooked lightly through the tips of Pete’s fingers and brushed by Pete’s cool, dry, palm, callus to callus. This felt right, whole, beautiful; and Patrick looked forward to never letting go.

 

 

**_the end_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy happy! Thanks for reading!


	47. Chapter 47

“Go away,” Patrick moaned under his breath. It was a novel idea, opening the door and explaining himself, but if Pete seriously thought he was cut out for that kind of direct confrontation he was totally batshit insane. Patrick had always been an outspoken advocate of hiding from your problems behind locked doors, and he couldn’t think of any damn reason at all to change his allegiances now. Really, what kind of man would he be if he changed his whole belief system every time there was a crisis? Who threw away his whole stance on something just when it became inconvenient for him? A flip-flopper! A John Kerry! No, there was no _way_ Patrick was stumbling down _that_ slippery moral ravine, not on Pete’s account.

Patrick decided—and he was quite firm on this—he would be staying where he was until Pete left or the world ended and there was no way around it. He was just that kind of guy.

Undaunted, Pete pounded on the door again. “Just wanted to let you know,” he called through the wood Patrick fervently hoped would hold, “I’m not leaving this spot ‘til you explain to me what your problem is.”

This was not the most delicate way to pose an inquiry, but then, Pete had never been renowned for his tact. After all, he was currently screaming little conversation bytes through a solid wood door, if that was any indication. Still, manners aside, Pete’s latest messy stab at polite conversation posed something of a dilemma for Patrick. He didn’t relish being stranded in here. He was at least a little bit hungover, and breakfast, hydration, his toothbrush and a much-needed shower all lay quite resolutely on what clearly was the wrong side of the door.

He turned on the radio to drown out the sound of Pete. But it was that damn song again—the one that he couldn’t so much as _hum_ to himself without drifting into wistful thoughts about Pete. He turned it off again.

Patrick reflected that a far cleverer plan would have involved trapping _Pete_ on this side of the door, or perhaps faking his own death and never showing his face again. Hindsight was, indeed, 20/20.

Still, he doubted Pete had either the attention span or the flexibility that would be necessary to starve him out. He might win this thing yet. After all, all he had to do was hold out longer than Pete could. That was child’s play. That was easy. That sounded like a goddamn Saturday afternoon at the beach. To sum up, he could do that shit all day long, and often did.

Spirits bolstered, he scrounged through his room’s chaotic disorder ‘til he found a bag of peanut M&Ms, probably laying there open since before the tour, yet intriguingly only half-eaten, and hunkered down to wait.

Some time passed. Without a clock in his room, it was impossible to say how much—he usually relied on his cell phone, currently sitting atop his coffee table, for these things—but the slats of sun across his floor had traveled an inch or so and the knocking had ceased a healthy quarter-inch ago. He wasn’t certain, but thought he might be safe to venture out. Of course—Pete was nothing if not wily. It could be a trap. He would have to be careful.

Patrick began with thorough visual recon of the crack below his bedroom door. He saw no obstructions. He made a few passes with a coat hanger next, to trigger potential booby traps as well as prompt a response from Pete, should he be cleverly hidden a few inches above the ground. When silence reigned and the hanger set off nothing, Patrick deemed that the coast was as close to clear as he was likely to get. He’d have waited longer, to make certain, but he really was very hungry.

He cracked open the door a fraction of a factor of an inch at a time, relieved to find a deserted hallway beyond. He made a quick sweep of the rest of the apartment as quietly as possible and found no remaining traces of his friend.

Emboldened by his victory, a positively sunny mood swept Patrick. Weak late-season sunshine crept over his skin and warmed him where he stood. He felt distant from himself, his usual ennui, the standard turmoil; he felt bizarrely chipper. He felt, well— _well_.

Truth be told, his mood didn’t sink so much as bob a little on a natural current when he discovered Pete’s note taped to the door—after breakfast and an invigorating shower, because who looks on the back of the door they’ve been hiding behind when the enemy might still lurk in the apartment? People with poor survival instincts, that’s who. Patrick had always prided himself on his keen survival instincts, he decided.

Pete’s note read:

_Stump—_

_Band meeting at Joe’s 10:30.  
You fucking weirdo._

_—Pete_

It was, in fact, drawing up on half past eleven as Patrick read the note. There was going to be hell to pay, he knew it—lateness was not tolerated. It was his own policy, instituted during a period of exasperation at being stood up by his suburbanite, family-having, so-called friends. He had never had cause to regret instating this rule before, as he still lived in the city and was a bit of a loser with nowhere better to be, and had never before been late for band business. But he’d given each of them hell on multiple occasions, and somehow didn’t think they’d be letting this slide.

Patrick just barely stifled a groan, and resigned himself to his fate.

 

 

**TURN TO CHAPTER 41 AND CONTINUE READING.**


	48. Chapter 48

Honesty was certainly a policy. Whether or not it was the best one was, Patrick felt, still up in the air. And he wouldn’t want to bank too hard on shaky rhetoric, would he? Then again, he wasn’t much of a liar. So he forged a path down the middle ground: he told the truth, or at least a version of it. It just wasn’t the _whole_ truth. He hoped that utilizing this stratagem would allow him to reap the theoretical benefits of the honesty policy as well as the verisimilitude of experimental deception. As a mission statement, it was pretty damn solid.

“I can’t tell you,” said Patrick, and he was feeling pretty confident about this until Pete’s face darkened in an unprecedented scowl.

“What is this, grade school?” he asked.

Patrick, feeling cornered, stifled a hysterical giggle. He ought to have said he had no idea what had given the website that notion. He should have denied it like crazy. Now he was backed against a wall, a few keen questions away from giving away the whole truth.

As much as Patrick usually enjoyed the idea of being pushed up against a wall by Pete, his friend was unnaturally talented when it came to asking keen questions.

Pete narrowed his eyes, hitting Patrick with the full force of the piercing look he’d learned to dread. “Do I _know_ this person? Is that why you can’t tell me?”

A series of increasingly implausible lies flitted through Patrick’s head. She’s an heiress to an off-shore sugar cane plantation protected by the Secret Service and wants to keep our relationship a secret. She’s a crime-fighting vigilante and revealing my connection to her puts my life in peril. She’s an extraterrestrial princess sent here as a liaison to earth and for obvious reasons I can’t discuss it. Something, anything—but he simply didn’t have the temerity to pull that kind of things off.

He also couldn’t say ‘it’s actually a “he” kind of scenario’ or ‘it’s you’ (for reasons he felt were obvious, up to and including the fiery, screaming end of life, the universe, and everything). Once again, Patrick stumbled drunkenly around on the middle ground. “Yes,” he squeaked, terror audible in his suddenly damnably girlish voice. He was digging his own grave and he knew it. He and Pete—well, they weren’t mutually acquainted with very many eligible females. Pete was going to run out of women to name pretty quickly, and then what? Then it would be the final nail in Patrick’s big, gay coffin is what.

Pete’s eyes flashed suddenly and recognition drew over his face. “Oh god,” he hissed, and Patrick knew with a plummeting heart that he’d been found out. Pete grabbed him roughly by the shoulder and said in that rising, half-strangled voice that meant he was choking on anger, “Oh, god, it’s Ash, isn’t it? You’re in love with my wife.”

 

 

**PATRICK WEIGHS HIS OPTIONS AND DECIDES THAT:**

**HAVING HIS JAW BROKEN BY A RAMPAGING PETE IS STILL PREFERABLE TO HIS REAL SECRET GETTING OUT, AND LEAVES PETE’S WILD ASSUMPTION UNCHECKED…**  
…turn to chapter 50 and continue reading.

**HE SIMPLY CAN’T STAND IT ANYMORE AND CORRECTS PETE’S ABSURDLY WILD ASSUMPTION WITH THE REAL, WHOLE, FUCK-THE-MIDDLE-GROUND TRUTH, AS ONLY HE CAN TELL IT…**  
…turn to chapter 49 and continue reading.


	49. Chapter 49

“Uh, no,” said Patrick recklessly, throwing caution to the wind. Damn it, but he couldn’t let Pete think he was in love with his wife, and—Patrick was realizing—he couldn’t let Pete think he was in love with _any_ random faceless woman. True, Pete had apparently lost his mind—just by running a quick inventory of his powers of deduction and respective mental faculties—but Patrick felt that, at last, Pete deserved to know. He couldn’t bear the thought of Pete grinning like an idiot and congratulating him on finding the love of a good woman; it seemed like the next step was Pete as his best man, as the godfather of his children, and then they were 80 years old playing shuffleboard in Florida and Patrick was still pretending to check out young women in bikinis for the benefit of his best friend. He wouldn’t stand for it. He felt a small flare of his ever-present temper, but it didn’t make him angry—it gave him strength.

“I’m not in love with Ashlee,” Patrick pressed on, emboldened. “I’m in love with you.”

For just a fraction of a second, there was a flash of something ugly and fearful on Pete’s face. It was replaced by standard shock almost before Patrick saw it, but only almost. The grip of Pete’s hand on his shoulder slackened before falling away entirely. Patrick’s spark of strength twisted in his gut, growing nauseous and terrible. Pete was frightened by him—disgusted. And just like that, Patrick was furious.

“Oh,” Pete said at last. He laughed harshly, face flushing, and ran his hand through his hair. He fidgeted a little. “God, Patrick, I don’t really know what to do with that.”

Patrick’s temper did not entirely shield him from a blaze of shame. “You don’t _have_ to do anything with it,” he bit out, internally warring between humility and anger. Both were present in his voice, making for a stronger, more challenging statement than he’d meant to utter. “I mean, I don’t expect—”

Pete’s relief was visible. The maelstrom of Patrick’s emotion swirled harder. “I’m sorry, ’trick,” Pete said, half-strangled. “But I, um, I obviously don’t feel the same way.”

“I don’t expect you to,” Patrick finished hollowly. He was sinking, fast. He felt like an inconvenience, an imposition; he felt guilty and angry and sick. All those times Pete had hugged him, held him, kissed his neck, wrapped an arm around him. All those nights Pete had curled around his body, chin pressed in the hollow of his clavicle, soft happy sighs as he settled in. Every time he pressed his hips against Patrick and stroked his hands over him on stage—all of that, he was giving up. All of that meant nothing, was Pete’s clinginess or showiness and now—and now none of it would ever happen again, because that’s what it meant when something meant more to one person than the other, that’s what it meant when things weren’t mutual. Patrick was filled with a desperate sense of disparity, of unfairness; because it wasn’t fair, not really. Pete had always been the one pawing and clutching and kissing. Patrick hadn’t asked him to. At the beginning, Patrick hadn’t even _wanted_ him to. They’d had some talks about personal space. And now—now, even though Pete _did_ those things, Patrick was sick and sad and wrong for enjoying them. It was Patrick’s fault, and he was being punished. “I just… wanted you to know,” Patrick said weakly. The world spun.

Pete forced a smile. “Yeah,” he said, nodding, but then stopped. The smile faded. “Can I—I mean, can I ask _why_?”

“Why I—” Patrick echoed, aghast. Why he _loved_ him? Oh, Jesus Christ—

“Oh god, no, not that,” Pete said hurriedly, realizing. He looked horrified at the thought. “I mean why you thought I’d want to know.”

It was Patrick’s turn to be horrified. “I apologize,” he said stiffly, seething and fighting back tears at once. “You’ve been my best friend since I was fifteen. We talk about things. I didn’t like keeping it from you and—honestly? I didn’t think it would be a big deal.”

Pete looked pained. “You wanted to talk to me about it,” he said slowly, as if trying to work out Patrick’s apparently retarded thought process, “so you go and tell a _reporter_ you’re in _love_? Is that really the most direct—”

“You’re being a little critical here!” Patrick cried, getting defensively and feeling justified in this course. “Look, they tailed me from some guy’s apartment, and they were clearly going to make a big deal about it, so I told her I was in love with someone else to kind of, you know, divert the crisis, and then I had to run for it because Jesus, those bastards are like rabid beasts! And that’s it.”

Pete’s eyes were now bugging out of his skull. “Some guy’s apartment?” he echoed. “Patrick, you don’t—er—I mean—so do you just sleep around, or—?”

Patrick had to squeeze his eyes tight and take a deep breath before he was able to contend with this accusation of indiscriminate sexuality. “No, that’s always been your forte, not mine,” he cut neatly, having collected himself. Pete’s mouth flopped open in shock and Patrick knew he’d be marshalling his forces to lash out again. Pete himself had suffered several spells of total indiscrimination, some notorious and others quite secret save to those who knew him very well (i.e. Patrick) and those who shared a hotel wall with his headboard (i.e. also generally Patrick). Patrick didn’t like to mention these lapses in judgment, and never before had. If Pete’s midnight escapades—always enthusiastic, always discreet, and never once shadowed by observable remorse—were ever so much as alluded to, it was Pete doing the alluding, and even then only in the strictest of drunken confidences. Not once had Patrick breathed a word of what he’d aurally witnessed, the giddy, barely-legal cries of fangirls and –boys (and members of other bands) alike that carried through the wall almost as clearly as the slamming headboards did.

Patrick had also never brought word of these repeated indiscretions to Ashlee, cast in the role of doting young mother née pop star, whose position as Pete’s spouse was not enviable. She had asked him, of course—in her tearful suspicion, she had asked him. Sometimes they met, other times she only called, hysterical and convinced of infidelity. Patrick always doled out the standard lines, though no one could deny that Pete was a man of voracious appetites, of violent moods, of unstable judgment and destructive whims: she had every right to worry. How many times had Patrick reassured her, awkwardly patted her clasped hands, and sent her on her sniffling way with sunny, unconvincing mouthfuls of lies she could never quite swallow?

He had lied for Pete. He had protected Pete. He had, even to himself, made excuses for Pete. He had always, always been on Pete’s side, even as Pete brought him cruel lyrics, written to wound not just Ashlee but Patrick as well, and told him to sing, even as Pete fucked someone, _any_ one else with Patrick just a wall away—all of this given freely, purely, in the scorched piety of love. And he had laid awake nights and crawled through days in a glittering brume, and lived for years now on the one cry he’d heard (or imagined) through the wall while he jerked himself raw, the one that had sounded so very like _Patrick_.

By this time, Pete had mounted an attack, but Patrick felt far away. Even as Pete yelled, shattering the air with accusations of his own—“You came to _me_ , Patrick, I don’t know what you’re implying!”—he felt himself growing cold to the flame that had burned in him so long. This man, this hypocrite, that was yelling at him now with such disgust, was not _his_ Pete, not really. This was the man who cheated on his wife, who ran away from trouble, who hid behind his friends and pretended to be powerless whenever he was caught. This, he realized, was not his Pete at all—this was the man who had survived the events of that god-awful February that felt like lifetimes ago, who had survived the suicide of Pete Wentz. This was the man who had abandoned Patrick in a restaurant, had called him fat over brunch, who thought the word ‘friend’ entitled him to everything and yet required nothing in return. This was a man who had proposed to a young woman he’d made pregnant, reluctantly married not long after her miscarriage, and impregnated again on yet another careless whim. This was a man, Patrick realized, who loved no one—not his wife, not his best friend, and certainly not himself.

And for this twisted version of Pete, it was too late to be saved. Patrick got to his feet, stretching his limbs and feeling beautifully alive in the cool wind.

“I’d like some time off,” he said calmly, interrupting Pete mid-sentence. “I’m taking a hiatus from the band. As it turns out, he’s not just some guy. His name is Saul—” Patrick was delighted and a little surprised to find a smile, a real one, unfolding on his own face—“and he makes me happy.”

Patrick didn’t walk away from Pete; he sprinted. He had to get back to Saul’s, had to give him his phone number and explain that he hadn’t crept out as if from a one-night stand—or that he had, but with good reason—had to find Saul, and tell him who he really was, and warn him about the reporters. Even as Pete sputtered and shouted behind him, Patrick, a free man, began to grin. Another thing he had to do, he’d decided, was bring coffee. It would go better this time around, of course.

Everything would.

 

 

 

**_the end_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Achievement unlocked: Patrick lives happily ever after... with someone else?!


	50. Chapter 50

“Why yes,” Patrick said with what he hoped was a suitable amount of conviction and tried not to wince. “Yes I am.”

For all that Pete had been the one to suggest it, his eyes still bugged half out of his head. It was still Pete, of course, so he wasn’t at a loss for words; but he’d certainly been given pause, which was considered one hell of an accomplishment in certain circles, at least three of which Patrick belonged to.

“Damn it, Patrick!” eventually burst out of Pete. It lacked any real anger. Instead, it was exasperation and fondness; not at all how a man terribly attached to his wife—or rather, _appropriately_ attached to his wife—should react to the news. In fact, Pete was taking it better than Patrick was.

All right. Yes. Patrick was panicking. He didn’t know where Pete had gotten the notion, or why he had agreed to it, or how to back it up. So he did what he usually did in times of crisis: he just kept talking.

“Yeah, I, um, love her a lot. It’s all that quality time we spend together. Gotta be. And I feel like this is a totally precipitated breakthrough and want you to know that I respect your relationship and would never have even said anything, ever, if you hadn’t, um, you know, guessed. Really what I’m trying to say is that I think this is, you know, a positive thing, because honestly what I’m trying to get across is that you and me, we’re like, you know? Brothers or, um, something closer than that. Clones, almost. So, uh, really, of course I have nothing but the utmost respect and, ah, obviously I just wasn’t prepared for you to find out about this totally and utterly axiomatic breakthrough, so obviously I’m surprised but yes, I saw it coming, of course I did, because a person plans for these things when they, you know, fall madly and—er—whatnot in love with their best friends’ spouses, and, ah, just out of curiosity, how did you know? Like what specific things made it apparent to you that Ashlee and I are—er—well we’re certainly not romantically involved, I would never do that, I just, um, wish that we were because she’s, ah, luscious and if you could just tell me what led you to this obvious and true conclusion so I can, ah, avoid ever doing any of those things again for, you know, like future reference or posterity or whatever?”

Patrick wasn’t sure how else to shout ‘I TOTALLY IN EVERY WAY ANTICIPATED THIS BECAUSE IT’S THE TRUTH’ without actually shouting those exact words, and was considering that route when Pete cut in delicately, having long ago learned to circumvent Patrick’s blather because, left unstemmed, it would simply pour out of him forever.

“I just can’t believe it,” Pete was saying, almost to himself. “All this time. All this time you didn’t care about women, and I thought—” He shook his head hard, frowning. “I should have seen it sooner. It was always just the one woman, the one you couldn’t have.” Something seemed to occur to him and he asked with alarm, “How long has it been? I mean—is that why you’ve been so strange about it all? The wedding, Bronx, all of it?”

“I suppose… that would make sense,” Patrick said readily, happy to have Pete lie for him, because Pete was much better at filling in the gaps in this fantasy world he’d created that Patrick (who was still not certain how he’d gotten here in the first place) would be. He felt like the lowest person in the world. Lying didn’t come naturally, didn’t feel right. It was one thing to keep the truth from Pete. It was another thing entirely to actively construct this goddamn Candy Land dreamfuck world of a scenario.

Pete shook his head, gaping, looking stunned. He let out a little groan. “Oh, ’trick, I wish you’d _said_ something. If I’d known… I mean, if I’d had any idea… God, it’s so obvious,” he added quietly, no longer quite speaking to Patrick. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.”

The revelatory vein was beginning to alarm Patrick. “No, really, it’s not _that_ obvious,” he cut in hurriedly. “Kind of out of the blue, isn’t it? I know _I’m_ rather taken aback by the whole business. Shocked, really.” He muttered the last to himself, shooting Pete dubious looks out of the corner of his eye.

Pete, still caught up in bemoaning the apparently obvious, paid the muttering no mind. “Does Ash know? Of course she does,” he scolded himself, deaf to Patrick’s feeble, guilty protests. “The three of us are going to have to sit down and talk about this,” he added, eyes falling on Patrick at last. He looked sad, shaken, lost. “This changes everything, Patrick.”

Patrick, meanwhile, was chewing his lip off his face. This whole situation had, not surprisingly, snowballed. “Does it?” he managed to ask in a choked voice. Oh god, oh god, oh god. What was he going to do? How was he going to pull this off? Assuming he was just going to keep up the charade for the rest of his life, of course, how was he going to look Ashlee in the eye and pretend that he _loved_ her? Oh, god. He’d never be able to visit Pete again. There would always be this vast awkwardness suspended between them. Ashlee would excuse herself from any room he entered. He’d show up at Bronx’s birthdays, playing creepy godfather while Jessica and Ash whispered in the corner and shot him dark looks and all the guests would wonder who he was, and whether or not he was a pedophile, and Pete would make weary excuses, saying, “This is Patrick. He used to be my best friend” and Patrick would hang his head in shame. And that, in a nutshell, was the rest of his life.

He was fucked.

Pete spoke very seriously, oblivious to the fact that Patrick felt very much like he was about to cry. “Of course it does,” he said, a definite glumness about him. “I’ve been molesting you for years even though I know it makes you uncomfortable, and—you really must hate me,” he interrupted himself as the thought occurred to him. He looked at Patrick, eyes wide and full of apology and sorrow. “I have… everything that should be yours. I have the band, I have the girl, I have the family…” Pete cracked an empty smile. “Obviously, I have the looks,” he added, teasing, trying to lighten the mood. The mood, however, was leaden, and refused to lose even a few pounds. (Much like Patrick himself.)

“I don’t hate you,” Patrick said. It was the only thing he could say. It was the only thing he could think. (Well, that, and _ohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuck!_.)

Pete laughed in a humorless way, plodding along in this determined, self-loathing vein. “And then we have to consider Ashlee’s feelings. I mean, if she feels the same—”

It was clear to Patrick what was happening. Pete was doing what he always did. He was undermining himself, pulling himself up by the roots, tearing himself to shreds and worst of all, making Patrick watch, making Patrick _help_.

“I don’t hate you!” he repeated, louder this time. Patrick had an impressive set of pipes and no one dared say otherwise, and maybe saying ‘louder’ was an understatement—maybe, instead, it was ‘super freaking crazy loud’ and Pete jumped a foot out of his own skin and shut up for once.

“Uh, okay,” Pete said at last, face flushing. He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand, curling tighter into himself and looking away guiltily. He was uncomfortable and sad, Patrick could see it at a glance—didn’t know what to do with himself, what to do with Patrick. And that was heartbreaking. He was—well, he was _his_ Patrick, Pete’s Patrick, totally private property that Pete had never had to share, and Patrick never wanted him to. And on the other end of things there was Ashlee, who Pete had vowed to share everything with and love forever no matter what, and Patrick was caught between, trying to hold on to Pete, trying to belong to Pete, while Pete tried to shove him off towards Ash so he could rock back and forth like a disturbed child in a corner and tear himself to pieces.

Patrick was not about to stand for that.

He was still a little embarrassed about the yelling—a passing jogger had pointedly averted her gaze and jogged all the faster—so he said it quietly, or at least mostly quietly. “Pete, I really, _really_ don’t hate you.”

“That’s fine, ’trick, I get it,” Pete said with the vocal equivalent of an eye roll. He would have just gone with the eye roll, probably, but couldn’t look at Patrick’s face. Patrick couldn’t understand why Pete was so hurt, so upset. It didn’t make any sense to him.

“Also,” Patrick ventured, because while picking up the scattered bits of his friend and piecing them back together was a priority, there were a few things he needed to accomplish while Pete was still broken, “I don’t think we should talk to Ashlee—or anyone—about this.”

“Why’s that?” Pete asked, looking surprised.

“I think we should forget it ever happened,” Patrick went on, exerting his Jedi will as hard as he could, to the point where he thought he might burst a blood vessel in his eye.  
Pete frowned. “No, Patrick,” he said, voice soft and folded in on itself. “I can’t let you do that. I… it hurts, yeah, but it hurts more to just hold on to that feeling… to just press it down in yourself and ignore it even though it’s always there, you can feel it like a gaping hole, and you can’t breathe around it or eat around it or even speak around it but you’ve got to get up and live your life like it’s not even there, and… Unrequited is awful, ’trick, and the only thing you can do is tell her and find out if she feels the same.”

Patrick was a little taken aback by the pain and experience churning in Pete’s voice. “You sound like you know what you’re talking about,” Patrick said in a squeaky, strangled voice.

Pete smiled, squinting out at the water, not looking at Patrick. He made a joyless little sound that Patrick could only assume was meant to be a laugh. “I… yes. I’ve had a… similar thing.”

“And what did you do?” Patrick asked reverently. The question he really wanted to ask was ‘who, for the love of god man, WHO?!’, but for now he was stifling the urge to shake Pete until a confession erupted, seeing as the Spanish Inquisition was neither a friendly nor an especially appropriate tactic to pull.

“I—nothing,” Pete said darkly, staring hard now at his hands, which had worked themselves into sandy knots. “But I know the person doesn’t reciprocate my… ardor,” he went on, anger building behind his eyes. He looked like he was about to be sick. “So, I mean, what are eight years of unasked for, unnoticed devotion? A waste of eight years. That’s it. And, ah, I know what that feels like, and… I don’t want you to take that chance. Because Ash might feel it too. And I could never stand in the way of your happiness, Patrick. You mean too much to me.”

While all this was a very touching speech, and one that normally would have rent Patrick apart with love and gratitude, he was hung up on something. A tiny, nagging detail. Eight years, Pete had said. Eight years. Well, Patrick had known him for eight fucking years, and just about the only other people that they’d known that long were Andy and Joe, and Patrick would have put money on the fact that, great as they were, Pete wasn’t in love with either one of them.

“How much do I mean to you, exactly?” Patrick heard himself asking in a small, insistent voice. “On like a scale of, you know, here to the moon.”

“The moon, of course,” Pete said mournfully, something that wasn’t very smile-like twitching around his lips. “You know it’s the moon. I can’t imagine life without Patrick. I don’t know what I did before you.”

“Pete,” Patrick pushed. As sweet as Pete was being, he wasn’t saying the right things. Everything else was just words, and Patrick didn’t have time for words. He was close to something big, and his window of opportunity was closing fast. “Why would you give up your wife because I had feelings for her? Why would you do that?”

Pete looked annoyed now. “I just told you!” he said snappishly. “Because I know what it’s like to love someone like that, someone you can’t have, and I don’t want to be the reason you have to suffer.”

“That’s bullshit,” Patrick said calmly, voice even. “That’s total, complete bullshit.”

Pete finally looked at Patrick’s face. He was clearly offended, and also near to crying. “Fuck you, Patrick,” Pete said in a furious, trembling whisper. “I’m offering everything to you, and you’re standing here calling me a liar? The fuck is that?”

“It’s me,” Patrick insisted, very close to Pete now, staring hard into his wet brown eyes, cheeks flushing with the excitement of it all. “It’s me, isn’t it. I’m your eight wasted years. You’ve wasted eight years on me.”

Pete paled and the damp in his eyes began to spill over. “What? No, man, I—” he began to protest, but his voice was weak and his eyes had already told Patrick the truth.  
“You love me,” Patrick pressed, in both triumph and awe. “You’ve been in love with me all this time.”

Pete crumbled, tears pouring freely now. “Fuck! Just—yes, all right? Yes! I’ve fucking loved you since the first time I saw you, since I heard you sing, and I’d have given anything for you, anything, and I know I can’t have you but shit, Patrick, shit! I’ve been trying to stop and it’s just—I don’t know if I can. I don’t think I can!”

Patrick’s face split into a dazzling grin. Pete scowled, a familiar pout breaking out despite his tears. Petulant to the last, he whined, “C’mon, don’t laugh at me. I’m pouring my heart out here, man!”

“I’m not laughing,” said Patrick, who was. A delirious giggle splintered his voice as he went on, “It’s just—I love you too, Pete.”

Pete swatted Patrick’s arm, laughing in spite of himself and the tears on his face. “Not like that, you douchewaffle. I, like, gay-below-the-waist love you.”

At the word ‘douchewaffle’, Patrick lost all control. He was now laughing with abandon, full-throated and golden as a note of a song he gave himself over to, eyes streaming, sound carrying out across the beach, across the water. “Douchewaffle?” he managed to gasp. “Really, _douchewaffle_?” Pete was doing his best to keep his pout in place, but even blinded by mirth Patrick could see it was only moments before Pete, too, gave in and began to laugh.

“You’re a dick,” Pete said sulkily, lips twitching.

“I know,” Patrick said, wiping his eyes. “You love it. And I love you. For real. I mean it.”

Pete quirked an eyebrow, burgeoning hilarity forgotten. “Below-the—”

“Yes, below-the-waist love you,” Patrick asserted, smiling prettily with full lips and feeling whole. This was the moment he’d been living for all along. This was the moment he’d been singing about. This was it: everything he’d ever dreamed of.

Nothing had ever felt better.

“For three years at least,” he went on, still beaming in that heart-rending way of his. “You’re the one—you’re the one I was talking about, when I told the reporter—”

A slow, giddy happiness was drawing across Pete’s face, filling almond eyes. “Not my wife?”

Patrick shook his head, still beaming like a kid in argyle knee socks with sweaty palms singing for strangers who are _loving_ it. It was a special, top-of-the-world, my-life-is-finally-starting, best-Christmas-ever, Pete-Wentz-loves-me kind of smile. “Never Ash. Never anyone, Pete, but you.”

“Always me?” Pete whispered shyly, whorishly, smiling now, eyes alight, mere inches from Patrick, lips hovering so near their warmth reached Patrick’s face and brought blood pounding to the surface, making it difficult, so difficult, to speak.

“Forever you,” Patrick promised in a breath, and their lips met at last, and their first kiss was never-ending.

 

 

**_the end…?_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaaaand that's the whole thing! Have you gotten to all the endings yet? Whether you have or not, I hope you enjoyed this! Thanks so much for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> REMEMBER: Don't read straight through! Make a choice and follow its instructions!


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